A CONDENSED HISTORY 



THE MIDDLE AGES 



BY 



VICTOR DURUY 

FORMERLY MINISTER OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION AND MEMBER 
OF THE ACADEMY 



TRANSLATED FROM THE " HISTOIRE GENERALE" 



REVISED AND EDITED BY 

EDWIN A. G-ROSVENOR 

PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN HISTORY IN AMHERST COLLEGE 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



P9t% 

UffiCti Of ; tt ^ 

AP:i I 4 1^00 



Copyright, 1898 and 1900, 
By THOMAS Y. CEOWELL & CO. 



SECOND COPY, 



963? 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I. The Barbarian World in the Fourth and Fifth 

Centuries . .1 

Definition of the Middle Ages. 

The Northern Barbarians. Their Habits and Religion. 

Arrival of the Huns in Europe. 

Invasion of the Visigoths. Alaric. The Great Invasion 

of 406. 
Capture of Rome by Alaric (410). Kingdoms of the 

Visigoths, Suevi, and Vandals. 
Attila. 

II. Principal Barbarian Kingdoms. The Eastern Empire 7 

Barbarian Kingdoms of Gaul, Spain, and Africa. 

Saxon Kingdoms in England. 

Kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy. Theodoric (489- 

526). 
Revival of the Eastern Empire. Justinian (527-565). 

III. Clovis and the Merovingians (481-752) . . .11 

The Franks. 
Clovis. 

The Sons of Clovis (511-561). 
Fr£d£gonde and Brunehaut. 
Clotaire II (584) and Dagobert (628). 
The Sluggard Kings. The Mayors of the Palace (638- 
687). 

IV. Mohammed and the Arab Invasion .... 17 

Arabia. Mohammed and the Koran. 
The Caliphate. The Sunnites and Shiites. Arab Con- 
quests (637-661). 
The Ommiades. 
Division of the Caliphate. 
Arabic Civilization. 

iii 



IV CONTENTS 



PAGE 

V. The Empire of the Franks. Efforts to introduce 

Unity in Church and State .... 24 

Difference between the Arab and Germanic Invasions. 
Ecclesiastical Society. 

Charles Martel and Pepin the Short (715-768). 
Charlemagne, King of the Lombards and Patrician of 

Rome (774). 
Conquest of Germany (771-804) . Spanish Expedition. 
Limits of the Empire. 
Charlemagne Emperor (800). 
Government. 

VI. The Last Carlovingians and the Northmen . . 33 

"Weakness of the Carlovingian Empire. Louis the 

Debonair. 
The Treaty of Verdun (843). 
Charles the Bald (840-877). 
Progress of Feudalism. 

Deposition of Charles the Fat. Seven Kingdoms. 
Eudes and the Last Carlovingians (887-987). 

VII. The Third Invasion 38 

The New Invasion. 

The Northmen in France. 

The Northmen Danes in England. 

The Northmen in the Polar Regions and in Russia. 

The Saracens and the Hungarians. 

Vin. Feudalism 43 

Feudalism or the Heredity of Offices and Fiefs. 
Civilization from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century. 

IX. The German Empire. Struggle between the Papact 

and the Empire 51 

Germany from 887 to 1056. 

The Monk Hildebrand. 

Gregory VII and Henry IV (1073-1085). 

Concordat of Worms (1122). 

The Hohenstaufens. 

X. Crusades in the East and in the West ... 69 

The First Crusade in the East (1096-1099). 
Second and Third Crusades (1147-1189). 



CONTENTS 



Fourth Crusade (1203). Latin Empire of Constan- 
tinople. 
Last Crusades (1229-1270). Saint Louis. 
Results of the Crusades in the East. 
Crusades of the West. 



XI. Society in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries 71 

Progress of the Urban Population. 
Intellectual Progress. 
National Literatures. 



XII. Formation of the Kingdom of France (987-1328) . 75 

First Capetians (987-1108). 

Louis the Fat (1108-1137). 

Louis VII (1137-1180). 

Philip Augustus (1180). 

Louis VIII (1223) and Saint Louis (1226). 

Victory of Taillebourg (1242). Moderation of Saint 

Louis. 
Philip III (1270) and Philip IV (1285). 
Quarrel between the King and the Pope. 
Condemnation of the Templars. 
Last Direct Capetians. The Salic Law (1314-1328). 



XIII. Formation of the English Constitution ... 82 

Norman Invasion (1066). 

Force of Norman Royalty in England. 

William II (1087). Henry I (1100). Stephen (1135). 

Henry II (1154). 

Richard (1189). John Lackland (1199). 

Henry III (1216). 

First English Parliament (1258). 

Progress of English Institutions. 



XIV. First Period of the Hundred Years' War (1328- 

1380) 88 

Causes of the Hundred Years' War. 

Hostilities in Flanders and Britain (1337). 

Battle of Crecy (1346). 

John the Good. Battle of Poitiers (1356). 

Attempt at Reforms. The Jacquerie. 

Treaty of Bre'tigny (1360). 

Charles V and Duguesclin. 



vi CONTENTS 

PAGE 

XV. Second Period of the Hundred Years' War (1380- 

1453) 92 

Charles VI. 

The Armagnacs and the Burgundians. John the 

Fearless. 
Insurrection in England. Wickliffe. 
Richard II (1380). 
Henry IV. Battle of Agincourt (1415). Treaty of 

Troyes (1420). 
Charles VII and Joan of Arc. 
Reforms and Success of Charles VII. 



XVI. Spain and Italy (1250-1453) 97 

Domestic Troubles in Spain. 

The Kingdom of Naples under Charles of Anjou (1265). 
Italian Republics. Guelphs and Ghibellines. 
Return of the Papacy to Rome (1578) . The Princi- 
palities. 
The Aragonese at Naples. 
Brilliancy of Letters and Arts. 



XVII. Germany and the Scandinavian, Slavic, and Turk- 
ish States (1250-1453) 104 

The Interregnum. The House of Hapsburg. 

Switzerland. Battle of Morgarten (1315). 

Powerlessness of the Emperors. 

Union of Calmar (1397). 

Strength of Poland. 

The Mongols in Russia. 

The Ottoman Turks at Constantinople (1453). 

XVIII. Summary of the Middle Ages 110 




Copyright. 1398, by T. V. Crowell & l 




Eugrav.J by CoUon, Ul.iuau A- Co.. N. V. 



HISTOKY OF THE MIDDLE AGES 



THE BARBARIAN WORLD IN THE FOURTH AND FIFTH 
CENTURIES 

Definition of the Middle Ages. — The term Middle Ages 
indicates the period which elapsed between the ruin of the 
Roman Empire and the establishment of the great modern 
monarchies. It extends from the German invasion at the 
beginning of the fifth century to the capture of Constanti- 
nople by the Ottoman Turks ten centuries later in 1453. 

In this period, situated between ancient and modern 
times, the cultivation of arts and letters was suspended, 
although a new and magnificent architecture was developed. 
In place of the republics of antiquity and the monarchies 
of our day there grew up a special organization called 
feudalism. This domination of the feudal lords, the product 
of many centuries, was finally overthrown by Louis XI, the 
Tudors and the princes contemporary with them. Although 
there were kings in all countries, the military and ecclesias- 
tical chiefs were the real sovereigns from the ninth to the 
twelfth century. The central power had no force, local 
powers had no overseer or guide, the frontiers had no fixed 
limits. The sovereign and owner parcelled out the territory 
into a multitude of petty states where the sentiment of 
nationality could not exist. Nevertheless above this condi- 
tion of many lords hovered the idea of Christianity repre- 
sented by the pope, and of a certain political unity represented 
by the emperor in comparison with whom all the kings of 
Europe were provincial. Thus the great wars of those times 
were religious wars, as were the crusades against the Mussul- 
mans of Palestine, the Moors of Spain, the Albigensian here- 
tics or the pagans of the Baltic, or were a struggle between 

1 



2 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 395. 

the two powers which aspired to rule the world, a quarrel 
between Papacy and the Empire. Hence there is a wide dif- 
ference between this period and those periods which preceded 
or followed. Hence of necessity it has a name and a place 
apart in universal history. 

The Northern Barbarians : their Habits and Religion. — 
During the military anarchy which drained the last re- 
sources of the Eoman Empire, peoples, hitherto concealed 
in the depths of the north, south and east, were setting 
themselves in motion beyond its boundaries, to which they 
daily drew nearer. In the north were three layers of 
humanity, placed at intervals in the following order: 
Germans, Slavs and Turanian tribes. On the east were 
the Persians, a settled and stationary people, who had 
often made war on the empire but had no thought of 
invading it. On the south in the deserts of their great 
peninsula were the Arabs, who as yet caused no fear; and in 
the wastes of Africa the Moorish populations, who had been 
touched rather than permeated by Eoman civilization. 

At the death of Theodosius (395) there was no serious 
danger except from the north. Driven forward by the 
Asiatic hordes from the banks of the Volga, the Germans 
were pressing upon the frontiers of the empire. The Suevi 
or Suabians, Alemanni and Bavarians were in the south 
between the Main and Lake Constance. The Marcomanni, 
Quadi, Heruli and the great Gothic nation controlled the 
left bank of the Danube. In the west along the Rhine 
extended the confederation of the Franks, formed as early 
as the middle of the third century, and toward the mouth 
of the Ems, the Frisii, a remnant of the Batavi. In the 
north were the Vandals, Burgundi, Rugii, Longobardi or 
Lombards; between the Elbe and the Eyder, the Angles 
and Saxons; farther north, the Scandinavians, Jutes and 
Danes in Sweden and Denmark, whence they emerged to 
join the second invasion; and lastly in the immense plains 
of the east and at many points of the Danubian valley, the 
Slavs, who were to follow the Germanic invasion but only 
to enter into history later on, first through the Poles and 
then through the Russians. 

A spirit totally different from that of the inhabitants 
of the Roman Empire animated these barbarians. Among 
them reigned the love of individual independence, the devo- 
tion of the warrior to his chieftain and a passion for wars 



A.D. 395.] : THE BARBARIAN WORLD 3 

of adventure. As soon as the young man had received in 
the public assembly his buckler and lance, he was a warrior 
and a citizen. He immediately attached himself to some 
famous chieftain, whom he followed to battle with other 
warriors, his leudes or henchmen, always ready to die in 
his behalf. The government of the Germans was simple. 
The affairs of the tribe were administered in an assembly 
in which all took part. The warriors gathered there to- 
gether in arms. The clash of shields denoted applause; 
a violent murmur, disapproval. The same assembly exer- 
cised judicial power. Each canton had its magistrate, the 
graf, and the whole nation had a konig, or king, elected 
from among the members of one special family which held 
hereditary possession of that title. For combat the war- 
riors chose the leader, or herzog, whom they wished to follow. 

The Olympus or heaven of these peoples presented a 
mixture of terrible and graceful conceptions. At the side 
of Odin, who gave victory and who by night rode through 
the air with the dead warriors ; of Donar, the Hercules of 
the Germans ; and of the fierce joys of Walhalla, — ap- 
peared the goddesses Freja and Holda, the Venus and the 
Diana of the north, who everywhere diffused peace and 
the arts. The Germans also adored Herta, the earth, Sunna, 
the sun, and her brother Mani, the moon, who was pursued 
by two wolves. The bards were their poets and encouraged 
them to brave death. It was their glory to die with a laugh. 

The Germans cultivated the soil but little. They pos- 
sessed no domain as private property, and every year the 
magistrates distributed to each village and each family the 
plot which they were go cultivate. They had no towns 
bat scattered earthen huts far distant from each other, 
each surrounded by the plot which the proprietor cultivated. 
Their habits were tolerably pure. Polygamy was author- 
ized only for the kings and the nobles. But drunkenness 
and bloody quarrels generally terminated their Homeric 
feasts, and they had a passion for gambling. 

Arrival of the Huns in Europe. — Behind this Germanic 
family which was destined to occupy the greater part of 
the empire, pressed two other barbarous races: the Slavs 
whose turn did not come until later, and the Huns who 
were an object of fear to the people of the west. Their 
lives were passed in enormous chariots or in the saddle. 
Their bony faces, pierced with little eyes, their broad flat 



4 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 375-403. 

noses, their enormous wide-spread ears and swarthy tat- 
tooed skins made them seem hardly human. At the end 
of the fourth century they had convulsed the whole bar- 
baric world and precipitated the Germans upon the Empire 
of the West. In consequence of intestine discords a part 
of the nation of the Huns, driven on toward Europe, crossed 
the Volga, carrying with them the Alani. They dashed 
themselves against the great Gothic empire in which Her- 
manric had united the three branches of the nation: the 
Ostrogoths or Oriental Goths east of the Dnieper ; the Visi- 
goths or western Goths; the Gepidae or Laggards farther 
to the north. The Ostrogoths submitted. The Visigoths 
fled toward the Danube and obtained from the Emperor 
Valens an asylum on the lands of the empire. They re- 
volted soon after against their benefactor and slew him at 
the battle of Adrianople (378). But they were arrested 
by Theodosius who established many of them in Thrace, 
where at first they faithfully defended that frontier against 
the Huns. 

Invasion of the Visigoths. Alaric. The Great Invasion 
of 406. — When at the death of Theodosius his two sons 
divided their heritage (395), Honorius received the West. 
His provinces bore the full brunt of the invasion from the 
north. In the course of half a century this empire endured 
the four terrible assaults of Alaric, Radagaisus, Genseric 
and Attila. Hardly had it fallen, when the Franks of 
Clovis wrested the finest portion from its invaders, which 
they still retain. The Visigoths under the lead of their 
king Alaric first tried their forces against the Empire of 
the East. They ravaged Thrace and Macedonia, passed 
Thermopylae where there was no longer a Leonidas, 
devastated Attica, but respected Athens, and penetrated 
into the Peloponnesus. The Vandal Stilicho, general of 
Honorius, surrounded them on Mount Pholoe, but they 
escaped. Arcadius, who reigned at Constantinople, only 
rid himself of their dangerous presence by pointing out the 
Empire of the West. They hastened thither, but found at 
Polentia in Liguria (403) the same Stilicho, who defeated 
them and forced them to evacuate Italy. Honorius, to 
celebrate this victory of his lieutenant, enjoyed a triumph 
at Rome and offered the people the last sanguinary games 
of the circus. Then he hid himself at Ravenna behind the 
marshes at the south of the Po, disdaining his ancient capi- 



A.D. 403-435.] THE BARBARIAN WORLD 5 

tal, and no longer daring to reside in Milan where Alaric 
had nearly surprised him. 

The ostensible consent of the empire had admitted upon 
its territory the Visigoths, who rewarded it badly. But 
now four peoples, the Suevi, Alani, Vandals and Burgundi- 
ans, at two points forced their way across the frontier. One 
of their divisions passed the Alps under Radagaisus, but 
was annihilated at Fiesole by Stilicho. Another crossed 
the Rhine (406) and for two years laid waste the whole of 
Gaul. Afterward the Burgundians founded on the banks 
of the Rhone a kingdom which Honorius recognized in 413, 
and the Alani, the Suevi and the Vandals proceeded to 
inundate Spain. The great invasion had begun. 

Capture of Rome by Alaric (410). Kingdoms of the 
Visigoths, Suevi and Vandals. — But Alaric returned to the 
charge. No longer was he confronted by Stilicho, who had 
been sacrificed to the jealousy of Honorius. He captured 
Rome, delivered it over to the fury of his barbarians who 
respected the Christian churches, and died some time later 
in Calabria at Cosenza (410). The Visigoths hollowed out 
a tomb for him in the bed of a river whose waters had been 
diverted, and then restored the natural course of the stream 
after having slain the prisoners who had done the work. 

The power of the Visigoths did not expire with Alaric. 
Notwithstanding their sack of Rome this people, who had 
been so long in contact with the empire, were specially dis- 
posed to yield to the paramount influence of Roman civiliza- 
tion. Ataulf, the brother-in-law of Alaric, and after him 
Wallia, entered the service of Honorius. In his interest 
they rescued Gaul from three usurpers who had there 
assumed the purple, and Spain from the three barbarian 
tribes which had. invaded it. For his reward Wallia 
obtained a portion of Aquitania, and founded the kingdom 
of the Visigoths (419) which was to cross the Alps. Dur- 
ing the same year Hermanric organized with the remnants 
of the Suevi a kingdom in the mountains of the Asturias. 
A little later the Vandals, who had been crowded into the 
south of Spain, crossed into Africa, which was opened to 
them by the treachery of Count Boniface. They captured 
Hippo despite its long resistance, which the exhortations 
of the Bishop Saint Augustine sustained, and forced the 
Emperor Valentinian to recognize their occupancy (435). 
Genseric who made this conquest also seized Carthage 



6 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 439-486. 

(439), founded a maritime power on those shores which had 
formerly acknowledged the Carthaginian sway, and until 
his death (477) ravaged all the coasts of the Mediterranean 
with his ships. In 453 he captured Eome and for the space 
of fourteen days gave it over to pillage. 

Attila. — Four barbaric kingdoms had already risen in 
the West when Attila made his appearance. This is the 
great episode in the invasion of the fifth century. What 
would have become of Europe under the Tartar domination 
of Attila, the scourge of God, who wished the grass not to 
grow where his horse's hoof had fallen ! Having put to 
death his brother Bleda, he reigned alone over the nation of 
the Huns, and held under his yoke all the peoples estab- 
lished on the banks of the Danube. He inhabited a wooden 
palace in a city in the plains of Paimonia, whence he had 
dictated laws and imposed tribute on Theodosius II, 
emperor of the East. When Genseric invited him to create 
a diversion favorable to his own designs he poured upon the 
West the immense hosts of his peoples. He traversed 
northeastern Gaul, overthrowing everything in his path, 
and laid siege to Orleans. The patrician Aetius hastened 
thither with a mixed army, in which Visigoths, Burgundi- 
ans, Franks and Saxons fought beside the Romans against 
the new invaders. The decisive battle of Chalons (451) 
drove Attila to the other side of the Rhine. He retreated 
toward Italy. There he destroyed many cities, and among 
others Aquileia, whose inhabitants escaped to the lagoons 
of the Adriatic where they laid the foundations of Venice. 
On his return to Pannonia he died of apoplexy (453) and 
the great power of the Huns wasted away in the quarrels of 
his sons. 

The Western emperors were hardly more than playthings 
in the hands of the barbarian chiefs who commanded their 
troops. One of them, the Herule Odoacer, ended this death 
agony by assuming the title of king of Italy (476). Thus 
fell the great name of the Western Empire, an event more 
important in subsequent than in contemporary eyes, which 
had been accustomed through more than half a century to 
see the barbarian masters dispose of everything. Neverthe- 
less a remnant of the empire still existed under the patri- 
cian Syagrius at the centre of Gaul, between the Loire and 
the Somme. Ten years later that too disappeared before 
the sword of the Franks. 



a.d. 400-455.] PRINCIPAL BARBARIAN KINGDOMS 



n 

PRINCIPAL BARBARIAN KINGDOMS. THE EASTERN 
EMPIRE 

Barbarian Kingdoms of Gaul, Spain and Africa. — We 

have just, seen how from the Loire to the Strait of Gibral- 
tar Alaric and his successors founded the kingdom of the 
Visigoths in Gaul and Spain, how Genseric built that of the 
Vandals in Africa, and lastly how Attila ravaged every- 
thing but constructed nothing. Other barbarian domina- 
tions established were those of the Burgundians, the Suevi, 
the Anglo-Saxons, the Ostrogoths and the Lombards which 
speedily passed away. 

The Burgundian kingdom, established in 413 in the val- 
leys of the Saone and Rhone with Geneva and Vienne for 
its principal cities, had eight kings of little distinction. 
Clovis rendered it tributary in 500 and his sons conquered 
it in 534. 

The kingdom of the Suevi, born at the same time, ex- 
pired a few years later. In 409 this people invaded Spain 
and seized the northwest region or Galicia. Under its 
kings Rechila and Rechiarius it seemed about to conquer 
the whole of Spain, but the Goths arrested its growth and 
reduced it to subjection (585). 

Saxon Kingdoms in England. — Britain, separated from 
the continent by the sea, had her invasion apart. Under 
the Romans three distinct peoples existed there. These 
were: in the north, in the Scotland of to-day, the Cale- 
donians or Picts and Scots whom the emperors had been 
unable to subdue ; in the east and south, the Loegrians who 
were affected by Roman civilization; on the west, beyond 
the Severn, the Cambrians or Welsh who seemed invinci- 
ble in their mountains. Abandoned by the legions (428) 
and left defenceless to the incursions of the Picts, the 
Loegrians (455) entreated assistance from the Saxons, Jutes 
and Angles, who were incessantly setting out from their 
German and Scandinavian shores to plough the seas. Two 



8 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 455-510. 

Saxon chiefs, Hengist and Horsa, routed the Picts and 
received in payment the isle of Thanet on the coast of 
Kent. But Hengist, despoiling those who had summoned 
him, took possession of the country from the Thames to 
the Channel and assumed the title of king of Kent (455). 
Thenceforth the ambition of all these pirates was to con- 
quer a settlement in Britain. The kingdom of Sussex or 
South Saxons was founded in 491 ; that of Wessex or West 
Saxons in 516; and that of Essex or East Saxons in 526. 
In 547 began the invasion of the Angles, who founded the 
kingdoms of Northumberland or the kingdom north of the 
Humber; on the eastern British coast, of East Anglia (577) 
and Mercia (584). These three kingdoms of the Angles 
being reckoned with the four Saxon kingdoms, there were 
in Britain seven little monarchies or the Anglo-Saxon 
Heptarchy which later on formed a single state. The 
Saxons formed the basis of the present population of the 
country and to them England owes her language. 

Kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy. Theodoric (489-526). 
— The conquest of Italy by the Ostrogoths took place later 
and nearly coincided with the conquest of Gaul by the 
Franks. Emancipated from the yoke of the Huns by the 
death of Attila, the Ostrogoths in 475 had taken as their 
chief Theodoric, the son of one of their princes, who had 
been reared as a hostage at Constantinople. At the invita- 
tion of Zeno, emperor of the East, Theodoric conquered 
Italy from the Heruli (489-493), and showed himself the 
most truly great of the barbarian sovereigns prior to Charle- 
magne. To his kingdom of Italy by skilful negotiations 
he added Illyricum, Pannonia, Noricum and Bhaetia. A 
war against the Burgundians gave him the province of Mar- 
seilles and he routed a Frankish army near Aries in 507. 
The Bavarians paid him tribute. The Alemanni appealed 
to him for aid against Clovis. Finally at the death of 
Alaric II he became the guardian of his grandson Amal- 
ric and reigned in fact over the two great branches of the 
Gothic nation, whose possessions touched each other toward 
the Rhone and who occupied the shores of the Mediterranean 
in Spain, Gaul and Italy. Family alliances united him to 
almost all the barbarian kings. 

He made an admirable use of peace. The newcomers 
needed land. Each city gave up one-third of its territory 
for distribution to the Goths. This preliminary assignment 



A.D. 510-527.] PRINCIPAL BARBARIAN KINGDOMS 9 

once made, a common law was established for the two peo- 
ples, though the Goths retained some of their peculiar 
customs. In other respects he aimed at separating the van- 
quished from the victors, reserving arms foi- the barbarians 
and civil dignities for the Romans. He possessed a great 
veneration for ancient imperial institutions. He consulted 
the senate of Rome and maintained the municipal system 
of government, himself appointing the decurions. Thus a 
barbarian restored to Italy a prosperity which she had lost 
under her emperors. The public edifices, aqueducts, thea- 
tres and baths were repaired, palaces and churches were 
built and the waste lands were cultivated. Companies 
were formed to drain the Pontine Marshes and those of 
Spoleto. The population increased. Theodoric, who did 
not know how to write, gathered around him the finest liter- 
ary geniuses of the time, Cassiodorus, Boethius and Bishop 
Ennodius. Himself an Arian, he respected the Catholics 
and confirmed the immunities of the churches. Yet the 
close of his reign was saddened by threats of persecution in 
reprisal for what the Eastern emperor was inflicting on the 
Arians, and by the torture of Boethius and of the prefect 
Symmachus, unjustly accused of conspiracy. He died in 
526 and his kingdom survived him only a few years. 
Thus too passed rapidly away the Vandals and the Heruli, 
the Suevi and the Burgundians, the western and eastern 
Goths. They all formed part of the barbarian guard which 
first entered the empire. Roman society, incapable of de- 
fending itself, seems to have been strong enough to com- 
municate to those who came in contact with it that death 
which it bore in its own breast. 

Bevival of the Eastern Empire. Justinian (527-565). — 
The ruined Empire of the West had been replaced by thir- 
teen Germanic kingdoms; those of the Burgundians, Visi- 
goths, Suevi, Vandals, Franks, Ostrogoths and of the seven 
Anglo-Saxon states. The Greek Empire alone had escaped 
invasion and remained erect in spite of its religious dis- 
cords and the general weakness of its government. The 
reign of Theodosius II, the longest which the fifth century 
presents (418-450), was really that of Pulcheria, the sister 
of the incapable emperor. It was signalized by the publi- 
cation of the Theodosian Code. Under Zeno and Anasta- 
sius Constantinople was racked by quarrels and riots on 
questions of religion. 



10 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 527-568. 

Justinian restored vigor and brilliancy to this empire. 
He preserved intact the eastern frontier and forced the 
Persians to conclude in 562, after thirty-four years of war, 
an honorable treaty. He repulsed (559) an invasion of 
Bulgarians which threatened Constantinople. In the west 
he destroyed the kingdom of the Vandals by the victories 
of Belisarius and that of the Ostrogoths by the successes 
of the eunuch Narses. While his generals were winning 
battles, his lawyers were drawing up the Code, the Digest 
or Pandects, the Institutes and the Novellce, which have 
transmitted to posterity the substance of ancient jurispru- 
dence. This reign was the glorious protest of the Eastern 
Empire and of civilization against invasion and barbarism. 
The splendor was of brief continuance. In 568 Italy was 
lost. Concpiered by the Lombards, a fourteenth Germanic 
kingdom was founded, which lasted more than 200 years 
and was to fall under the blows of Charlemagne. From her 
geographic position Constantinople could not be the heir of 
Rome. The inheritance of the Western Empire was to 
belong to the Germanic race. 

As for the Eastern Empire, after that brilliant period it 
passed many gloomy days despite the talent of princes like 
Maurice and Heraclius. Thanks to her strategic situation 
Constantinople, the daughter of aged Rome, who bore on 
her brow from her very birth the wrinkles of her mother, 
alone remained standing like an isolated rock. For ten 
centuries she braved victoriously the assaults of the Mus- 
sulmans in the south and of the Slavic and Turanian tribes 
on the north. 




Eograoedby Colli..., Ul.u.ni, A Co., N. Y. 



A.D.241-M8.] CLOVIS AND THE MEROVINGIANS 11 



III 

CLOVIS AND THE MEROVINGIANS 

(481-752) 

The Franks. — In the third century after Christ the 
Germans had formed on the right bank of the Rhine two 
confederations : on the south, that of the Suevic tribes, 
who called themselves the Alemanni or men; on the 
north, that of the Salii, the Sicambri, the Bructeri, the 
Cherusci and the Catti, who took the name of Franks or 
the brave. They are first mentioned by Roman writers in 
241 when Aurelian, then legionary tribune, defeated a body 
of Franks on the lower Rhine. Probus recaptured from 
them the Gallic cities which they had attacked on the 
death of Aurelian, and transported a colony of them to the 
Black Sea (277). A little later others crossed the Rhine, 
devastated Belgium and received from Julian authority to 
establish themselves on the banks of the Meuse which they 
had ravaged. Several of the Frankish chiefs rose to high 
positions in the empire. Thus Arbogast was the prime 
minister of Valentinian II and disposed of the purple. 

Twelve years after his death the Franks, already estab- 
lished in northern Gaul, tried to arrest the great invasion 
of 406. Failing in this they wished to obtain their share 
of these provinces which the emperor himself was aban- 
doning, and their tribes advanced into the interior of the 
country, each one under its own chieftain or king. At that 
time there were Frankish kings at Cologne, Tournay, Cam- 
brai and Therouanne. Of these kings, Clodion, chief of 
the Salian Franks of the country of Tongres or Limburg, 
is the first whose existence has been well authenticated. 
Pharamond, his reputed predecessor, is mentioned only in 
later chronicles. He captured Tournay and Cambrai, put 
to death all the Romans whom he found and advanced 
toward the Somme which he crossed ; but in the neighbor- 
hood of Sens was vanquished by the Roman general Aetius 
(448). 



12 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 448-496. 

He did not survive his defeat. Merovig his kinsman 
succeeded. He joined three years later with all the bar- 
barians quartered in Gaul and with the rest of the Romans 
in resisting the Huns. The battle of Chalons (451) against 
Attila cost the lives, it is said, of 300,000 men and rescued 
the barbarian nations encamped between the Rhine and the 
Pyrenees. 

Childeric, the son of Merovig, was expelled by the Franks 
who were disgusted at his excesses. He was replaced by 
the Roman general iEgidius. Recalled at the end of eight 
years, he reigned over the Franks until his death and was 
interred in Tournay, where his tomb was discovered in 
1633. His son Chlodowig or Clovis was the real founder 
of the Frankish monarchy. 

Clovis. — In 481 Clovis possessed only a few districts of 
Belgium with the title of king of the Salian Franks, who 
had settled in the neighborhood of Tournay. He com- 
manded 4000 or 5000 warriors. Five years later he 
defeated near Soissons Syagrius, the son of iEgidius, who 
governed in the name of the empire the country between the 
Somme and the Loire. He forced the Visigoths among whom 
the vanquished general had taken refuge to give him up, put 
him to death and subdued the country as far as the Loire. 

In 493 he married Clotilde, daughter of a Burgundian 
king, herself an Orthodox Christian. This union had the 
happiest results for Clotilde soon converted her husband. 
As all the barbarians established in Gaul were Arians and 
hence in orthodox eyes equivalent to heretics, Clovis be- 
came the hope of the orthodox Gauls. Even before his 
conversion, Amiens, Beauvais, Paris and Rouen had opened 
their gates, thanks to the influence of their bishops. The 
Alemanni having crossed the Rhine, Clovis marched against 
them. He was on the point of being vanquished, when he 
invoked the God of Clotilde. Success seemed granted to 
his prayer, and the Alemanni were thrust back beyond that 
river and pursued into Suabia. On his return Clovis was 
baptized with 3000 of his men by Saint Remi, archbishop of 
Reims. As the archbishop sprinkled the holy water on the 
head of the neophyte he said to him, " Bow thy head, soft- 
ened Sicambrian. Adore what thou hast burned ; burn what 
thou hast adored." An Arian sister of Clovis was baptized 
at the same time (496). The Gallo-Roman inhabitants, 
oppressed by the Arian Burgundians and Visigoths, thence- 



A.D. 496-511.] CLOVIS AND THE MEROVINGIANS 13 

forth centred their affections and hopes in the converted 
chieftain of the Franks. All the episcopate was on his 
side. " When thou tightest," wrote to him Avitus, bishop 
of Vienne, "we share the victory." So they aided him in 
all his enterprises. Some of his liegemen deserted, but his 
successes and above all the booty they could gain under so 
skilful a leader brought them back. 

The country between the Loire and the Somme was sub- 
jugated and Armoricum won over to his alliance. Then he 
attacked the Burgundians (500), defeated their king Gundo- 
bad and made him pay tribute. Then one day he said to 
his soldiers, "It causes me great grief that those Arian 
Visigoths possess a part of this Gaul. Let us march with 
the help of God and after vanquishing them let us reduce 
their county to our power." The army crossed the Loire, 
by the express order of the king religiously respecting on 
its passage all the property of the churches. The Visi- 
gothic king Alaric II was beaten and slain at Vouille 
near Poitiers. That city, Saintes, Bordeaux, Toulouse, 
opened their gates and Septimania with Nimes, Beziers 
and Narbonne would have been conquered if Theodoric, 
the great head of the Ostrogoths, had not sent succor to his 
brethren of the West. On his return from this expedition 
Clovis found the ambassadors of the Emperor Anastasius 
who brought him the titles of consul and patrician with the 
purple tunic and robe. His last years were bloody. He 
slew Sigebert and Chloderic kings of Cologne, Chararic 
another petty Frankish king, Ragnachairus king of Cam- 
brai, and Benomer king of the Mans, that he might seize 
their kingdoms and treasures. He died in 511 and was 
interred in the basilica of the Holy Apostles or Saint 
Genevieve which he himself had built. His reign had 
lasted thirty years, and his life forty-five. 

At his death the state which he founded comprised all 
Gaul except Gascogne where no Frankish troop had made 
its appearance, and Brittany which was controlled by 
counts or military chiefs. The Alemanni in Alsace and 
Suabia were associates in the fortunes of the Franks rather 
than subject to the authority of their king. The Burgun- 
dians after paying tribute for a time fully intended to 
refuse it in future ; and the cities of Aquitaine, feebly re- 
strained by Frankish garrisons at Bordeaux and Saintes, 
remained almost independent. 



14 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 511-571. 

As to the victorious nation united only for conquest and 
pillage it had contented itself with expelling the Visigoths 
from Aquitaine without replacing them. The war ended 
the Franks had returned with their booty to their former 
abodes between the Rhine and the Loire. Clovis himself 
had settled at Paris, a central position between the two 
rivers, whence he could more easily watch the provinces 
and his enemies. 

The Sons of Clovis (511-561).— The four sons of Clovis 
shared his territories and followers, so that each one had a 
nearly equal portion of the land to the north of the Loire 
where the Frankish nation had settled, and also a part of 
the Roman cities of Aquitaine which paid rich tributes. 
Childebert was king of Paris ; Clotaire, king of Soissons ; 
Clodimir ? king of Orleans ; Thierry, king of Metz or Aus- 
trasia. 

The impulse imparted by Clovis lasted for some time. 
His sons carried their arms to Thuringia, Burgundy, Italy 
and Spain. The Alemanni and the Bavarians had recog- 
nized them as suzerains, and the Saxons paid them trib- 
ute. 

Frede'gonde and Brunehaut. — Clotaire, one of the sons of 
Clovis, had reunited his father's kingdom in 558, but upon 
his death three years afterward the Frankish monarchy be- 
came again a tetrarchy by the partition of its states among 
his four sons : Caribert, king of Paris ; G-ontram, of Orleans 
and Burgundy; Sigebert, of Austrasia, and Chilperic, of 
Soissons. From that time rivalry began, destined to increase 
between the eastern Franks or Austrasians and the western 
Franks or Neustrians. The former were more faithful to the 
rude manners of Germany of which they were the neigh- 
bors. The latter were more accessible to the influence of 
that Roman civilization in the midst of which they had 
settled. 

This opposition finds its first expression in the hatred of 
two women. Sigebert had married Brunehaut, the daughter 
of Athanagild king of the Visigoths, beautiful, learned and 
ambitious. Chilperic, desirous also of a royal wife, ob- 
tained the hand of Galswinthe, the sister of Brunehaut. 
Soon however he returned to his imperious concubine Fre- 
degonde, who caused her rival to be strangled and took 
her place. Brunehaut burning to avenge her sister stirred 
up Sigebert to attack Neustria. Her husband, victorious, 



A.». 571-628.] CLOVIS AND THE MEROVINGIANS 15 

was about to proclaim himself king of the Neustrians, 
when two servants of Fredegonde, "bewitched by her," 
stabbed him at the same time in the side with poisoned 
knives (575). As his son Childebert II was still a minor, 
the Austrasians were governed by a mayor of the palace. 
That official was originally a mere steward of the king's 
household, chosen from among his vassals. Supported by 
other vassals, the mayors of the palace were to acquire an 
important influence to the advantage of the barbarous aris- 
tocracy, already very hostile to royalty, and were to hold 
the feeble kings in tutelage until the moment came when 
they could take their place. 

The years that followed are confused and bloody, filled 
with the turbulence of the leudes or liegemen, and above all 
with the fierce struggle between Brunehaut and Fredegonde. 
The former in the name of her children and grandchildren 
seized the power in both Austrasia and Burgundy. Her 
stern and orderly rule alienated her subjects, who proposed 
to Clotaire II, the son of Chilperic and Fredegonde, to make 
him their king if he would rid them of Brunehaut. Aban- 
doned by her troops, she and her four grandsons were capt- 
ured by Clotaire. He cut the throats of the young princes 
and had the aged queen fastened to the tail of a wild horse 
(613) which dashed her body to pieces. 

Clotaire 11 (584) and Dagobert (628). — Clotaire II for the 
third time established the unity of the Frankish monarchy. 
Under his reign seventy-nine bishops and many laymen took 
part in the Council of Paris, which promulgated a so-called 
perpetual constitution whereby the power of the ecclesiastical 
and secular aristocracy was greatly increased. The taxes 
imposed were abolished, the fiefs granted were declared in- 
alienable and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction was extended. 

The reign of Dagobert was the most brilliant of the Mero- 
vingian line and gave to the Franks preponderance in West- 
ern Europe. He stopped the incursions of the Venedi over 
whom a Frankish merchant had become king, opposed the 
incursions of the Slavonians into Thuringia and delivered 
Bavaria from a Bulgarian invasion. In Gaul he compelled 
the submission of the Vascons and the alliance of the Bre- 
tons whose chief had assumed the title of king. He chose 
clever ministers and won a legitimate popularity by travel- 
ling about his kingdom to administer justice in behalf of the 
small as the great. He revised the laws of the Salii, the 



16 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 638-687. 

Riparii, the Alemanni and the Bavarians, encouraged com- 
merce and industry and built the Abbey of Saint Denis. 

The Sluggard Kings. The Mayors of the Palace (638-687). 
— But Dagobert carried the power of the Merovingians with 
him to the tomb. After him came the sluggard kings. 
Nevertheless royalty found a formidable champion in 
Ebroin, mayor of the palace in Neustria, who with increased 
energy resumed the struggle of Brunehaut and Dagobert 
against the leudes and their chief, Saint Leger, bishop of 
Autun. In a document he wrote, " Those men have appar- 
ently forfeited their fiefs who are couvicted of infidelity to 
those from whom they hold them." Many vassals who 
seemed too independent were put to death, deprived of their 
property or banished. The Austrasian vassals made com- 
mon cause with the exiles. They deposed their Merovingian 
king and confided the power to the two mayors, Martin and 
Pepin d'Heristal, with the title of princes of the Franks. 
After the death of Ebroin they gained the battle of Testry 
and all Neustria in consequence (687). From that day 
forth Pepin d'Heristal reigned in reality though without 
assuming the title of king. His successors were to erect 
the Frankish Empire in which all the Germanic invasion 
is summed up. 




Copjrlghl, 18911. bj T. V 




Kn,r„,cJ l,j CulUli, Ul,u,au 4 Co., N. y 



A.d. 570-610.} MOHAMMED AND THE ARAB INVASION 17 



IV 

MOHAMMED AND THE ARAB INVASION 

Arabia. Mohammed and the Koran. — After the German 
invasion which came from the north followed the Arab 
invasion from the south. Arabia, whose peoples then ap- 
peared for the first time on the scene of history, is a vast 
peninsula covering more than a million square miles. 
Northward it opens upon Asia through extensive deserts 
and is attached on the northwest to Africa by the Isthmus of 
Suez. Elsewhere it is surrounded by the Ked Sea, the Strait 
of Bab-el-Mandeb, the Indian Ocean, the Strait of Ormus and 
the Persian Gulf. The ancients, who had small acquaintance 
with it, divided it into three parts : Arabia Petrsea or the 
peninsula of Sinai'; Arabia Deserta or Nedjed, comprising 
the deserts which extend from the Red Sea to the Euphrates ; 
and Arabia Felix or Yemen. Its religion was a mixture of 
Christianity, introduced by the Abyssinians and Greeks ; of 
Sabeism, taught by the Persians ; of Judaism, which had 
filtered in everywhere in the track of the Jews ; and above 
all of idolatry. The temple of the Kaaba in the holy city 
of Mecca contained 360 idols, the custody of which was in- 
trusted to the illustrious family of the Kore'ish. There was 
much religious indilference in the presence of so many faiths. 
The masses of population were kept together by the poets, 
who were already developing the language of Islam in those 
poetical tournaments, wherein the idea of Allah, the Su- 
preme Being, a belief natural to such a country, frequently 
occurs. 

Mohammed was born of Kore'ish parents in 570. Early 
an orphan and without fortune, he became a camel-driver 
and travelled in Syria where he became intimate with a 
monk of Bostra. His integrity and intelligence won the 
hand of a rich widow named Khadijah. Thenceforth he 
could give himself up to his meditations. At the age of 
forty his ideas were fixed. 

To Khadijah, to his cousin Ali, to his freedman Sei'd and 



18 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 610-632. 

to his friend Abou-Bekr he disclosed his purpose of restoring 
to the religion of Abraham its primitive purity. He told 
them that he was receiving from God through the Angel 
Gabriel the verses of a book which was to be the book of all 
others, or the Koran. He designated his new religion as 
Islam or entire resignation to the divine will. His hearers 
believed in him and Abou-Bekr won over Othman and the 
fiery Omar to the new faith. The proselytes increased 
daily. Persecuted by the Korei'sh, he fled to Yatreb (622). 
With the year of the Hegira or Flight the Mussulman era 
begins. 

Yatreb now became Medinat-al-Nabi, the city of the 
Prophet, commonly called Medina. At the battle of Bedr 
300 of his followers defeated 1000 Korei'sh ((324). After- 
wards he was worsted at Mount Ohud, but gained a 
decisive advantage in the War of the Nations or of the 
Trench. Finally he reentered Mecca (630) where he 
destroyed all the idols, saying : " The truth has come. Let 
the falsehood disappear ! " From that moment he was the 
religious leader of Arabia. He wrote threatening letters to 
Chosroes, king of Persia, and to Heraclius, emperor of the 
East, and was on the point of undertaking a holy war against 
them when he died (632). 

The Koran is the collection of all the revelations which 
according to the occasion fell from the mouth of the Prophet, 
and which were collected in a first edition by the orders 
of the Caliph Abou-Bekr, and in a second by those of the 
Caliph Othman. Composed of one hundred and fourteen 
chapters or surates subdivided into verses, it contains both 
the religious and civil law of the Mussulmans. The basis 
of its dogma is fully summed up in these words, " There is 
no God but God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God." 
In Allah, the sole and jealous God, the Koran admits no plu- 
rality of persons and it places no inferior divinity beside 
him. It rejects all idea of God made man ; but it teaches 
that God has revealed himself by a series of prophets, 
of whom Mohammed is the last and the most complete. 
Those who preceded him are: Adam, Noah, Abraham, 
Moses and Christ, with whom God communicated through 
angels, his messengers. Mohammed acknowledged that 
Christ possessed the gift of miracles which he himself had 
not. He preached the immortality of the soul, the resur- 
rection of the body and its participation in the joys or 



A.D. 632-6M.] MOHAMMED AND THE ARAB INVASION 19 

sufferings of a future life. A delightful but sensual para- 
dise was in store for the good, a burning bell for the bad. 
Nevertheless in this paradise which appealed to the vulgar 
crowd there are also spiritual joys. " The most favored of 
God will be he who shall behold his face evening and morn- 
ing, a felicity which will surpass all the pleasures of the 
senses as the ocean surpasses a drop of dew." 

He elevated the condition of Arab women. " A son," he 
said, " wins paradise at the feet of his mother." Before his 
day the daughters inherited nothing. He assigned to them 
one-half the portion of their brothers. While enforcing the 
authority of the husband, he bade him be a tender protector 
to his wife. Though he tolerated polygamy so as not to 
shock Eastern customs, he allowed a man only four legiti- 
mate wives, and advised that as a praiseworthy act a man 
should confine himself to one. The Koran prescribes severe 
penalties for theft, usury, fraud and false witness and 
enjoins alms. It minutely regulates the ritual of worship ; 
the fast of Eamazan ; the observance of the four sacred 
months, an ancient custom which like the truce of God 
suspended hostilities among the faithful ; the great annual 
pilgrimage to Mecca where Mohammed had installed the 
seat of this new religion ; the five daily prayers ; the ab- 
lutions, either with water or sand ; circumcision ; abstinence 
from wine and many other detailed observances. Never- 
theless so far as Christians and Jews were concerned, it is 
sufficient not to ally oneself with them by blood and one 
must not fight against them unless they give provocation. 
As for other people, it is the duty of every good Mussulman 
to attack, pursue and slay them if they do not embrace the 
religion of the Prophet. 

These doctrines, these hopes and these threats were power- 
ful springs of action which launched the Arabs, sword in 
hand, in every direction. 

The Caliphate. The Sunnites and Shiites. Arab Conquests. 
(637-661). — Mohammed did not designate his successor, but 
Abou-Bekr, whom he had charged with pronouncing the for- 
mal prayer in his place, was recognized as caliph or religious, 
civil, and military chief (632). Abou-Bekr in turn desig- 
nated Omar (634) and after Omar, Othman was elected (644), 
who was succeeded by Ali. The latter was the husband of 
Patima, daughter of the Prophet, and chief of the Fati- 
mite party which gave birth to the great Mussulman sect 



20 



HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 644-732. 



of the Shiites or Separatists. They regard Ali as having 
been unjustly excluded from the succession after the death 
of Mohammed. The Sunnites, or followers of tradition, rec- 
ognize Abou-Bekr, Omar and Othman as legitimate. After 
Ali the hereditary system begins with the Ommiades (661). 

This period is that of the great conquests. Khaled and 
Amrou by the victories of Aiznadin and the Yermpuk wrested 
Syria from Heraclius, emperor of the East, who had just 
returned victorious from expeditions against Persia. In ten 
years' time the conquest of Persia was assured by the vic- 
tories of Kadesiah, J alula and Nehavend. Yezdegerd, the 
last of the Sassanides, in vain besought succor from the 
emperor of China. In 639 Amrou entered Egypt and made 
himself master of the country after besieging Alexandria 
fourteen months. 

The Ommiades. — The usurpation of Moaviah, chief of the 
Ommiades, who rendered the government a despotism and 
made Damascus his capital, was followed by civil dissensions. 
Blood flowed in streams for thirty years. The almost sus- 
pended movement of conquest began again about 691 under 
Abd-el-Malek. In the east, Transoxiana and Sogdiana were 
conquered and India was threatened. Though in the north 
Constantinople successfully resisted a seven years' siege 
(672-679), the Arab power was established in the west 
along the entire northern coast of Africa. Kairowan was 
founded, Carthage captured, a revolt of the Moors stifled 
and the Columns of Hercules passed by Tarik who gave 
them his name as the mountain of Tarik or Gibraltar. The 
Spanish Visigothic kingdom, weakened by ecclesiastical in- 
fluence and given up to discord by its elective system of 
monarchy, succumbed at the battle of Xeres (711). Of all 
the peninsula the Christians retained only a corner of land 
in the Asturian mountains where Pelayo took refuge with 
his comrades. Carried on by their ardor the rapid con- 
querors crossed the Pyrenees, occupied Septimania, ravaged 
Aquitaine and were already marching upon Tours when 
Charles Martel arrested them by the victory of Poitiers or 
Tours (732). 

Division of the Caliphate. — Thus the Arabs at a bound 
reached the Pyrenees and the Himalayas. Their faith was 
supreme over two thousand leagues of country. Neverthe- 
less geography, the greatest of forces to support or destroy 
newborn states, condemned their empire to speedy partition 



A.D. 732-1058.] MOHAMMED AND THE ARAB INVASION 21 

among many masters, because it was too extensive to have 
one centre and contained too many different peoples to pos- 
sess unity. The diverse influences of locality and race soon 
began to manifest themselves and then to enter into conflict. 
The dynasties, representing this or that nationality, which 
geography and history had produced, began to dispute the 
throne with one another and as a natural result the empire 
fell to pieces. 

In 750 the Syrian dynasty of the Ommiades was over- 
thrown by Abul-Abbas, who founded the dynasty of the 
Abbassides, sprung from an uncle of Mohammed. A sin- 
gle Ommiad escaping proscription fled to Spain and there 
erected the Caliphate of the West or of Cordova (755). 
Thus the Abbassides now reigned only over the Caliphate 
of the East or of Bagdad, a new capital built upon the 
Tigris in 762 near the ancient Seleucia. There they fur- 
nished a succession of great men : Almanzor (754), Haroun- 
al-Raschid or the Just (786), Al-Mamoun (813) ; all of them 
patrons of letters, arts and science, which they had borrowed 
from the Greeks. But in those places which had always 
witnessed despotism and where the shade of the great kings 
still seemed to wander, the caliphs soon came to consider 
themselves the image of God on earth. A splendid court 
separated them from their people, immense wealth replaced 
the poverty of Omar and military ardor became extinct in 
the midst of an effeminate life. Then these men, ignorant 
how to fight, bought slaves to make soldiers of them, and the 
slaves became their masters. A guard of Seldjuk Turks was 
introduced into the palace. They filled it with disorder and 
violence and at their pleasure made or unmade sovereigns. 
The Abbassides fell into the condition of the French Sluggard 
Kings. Togrul Beg left to the caliph only an empty reli- 
gious authority (1058) and founded the power of the Seldjuk 
Turks. In the ninth century Africa was detached from the 
Caliphate of Bagdad and divided up among three dynasties : 
the Edrissites at Fez, the Aglabites at Kairowan and the 
Fatimites at Cairo. The latter claimed descent from Fatima, 
the daughter of Mohammed. 

As for the Caliphate of Cordova, like that of Cairo, it 
had its brilliant days. Many Christians being treated 
mildly mingled with the Mussulmans and formed the 
active population of the Mozarabis. The ever-skilful Jews 
were relieved from the rigors of the Visigothic law. Com- 



22 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [A.d. 755-1031. 

merce, industry and agriculture flourished and afforded 
the caliphs great riches. Convulsed by the conquests of 
Charlemagne's lieutenants north of the Ebro, the Caliphate 
of Cordova was again shaken by the revolts of the valis, 
or provincial governors, and by the insurrection of the 
bandits, Beni-Hafsoun, which lasted for eighty years. The 
reigns of Abderrahman I (755), Hescham I (787), Al-Hakam 
I and Abderrahman II were very fortunate. That of 
Abderrahman III surpassed all the rest (912-961). The 
successes of this caliph and of Almanzor, the chief minister 
of Hescham II, arrested on the Douro and the Ebro the 
progress of the Christian kingdoms founded in the north. 
But after Almanzor everything fell to pieces. An African 
guard delivered the palace over to a sanguinary anarchy 
which favored the efforts of the valis at independence. In 
1010 Murcia, Badajoz, Granada, Saragossa, Valentia, Seville, 
Toledo, Carmona, Algesiras, were so many independent 
principalities. In 1031 Hescham, the descendant of the 
Ommiades, was deposed and retired with joy into obscurity. 
Shortly after the very title of caliph disappeared. 

Arabic Civilization. — Such was the fate of the empire of 
the Arabs in the three continents, Asia, Africa and Europe ; 
a sudden and irresistible expansion, then division and a 
rapid general enfeeblement. But they had established 
their religion, their language and the laws of their Koran 
over a great number of peoples, and transmitted to the 
Europe of the Middle Ages industries and sciences of which 
they were, if not the inventors, at least the diffusers. 
While Europe was plunged in thick shades of barbarism, 
Bagdad, Bassorah, Samarcand, Damascus, Cairo, Kairowan, 
Fez, Granada, Cordova, were so many great intellectual 
centres. 

The Koran had determined the literary Arab language 
and it is preserved to our day just as Mohammed spoke it. 
Time and local influences have caused the vulgar tongue to 
undergo marked transformations. This Arabic, prodig- 
iously rich in words which express the objects and impres- 
sions of the desert, nevertheless adapted itself to all the 
usages of literature and science. From the moribund school 
of Alexandria the Arabs had received Aristotle whom they 
zealously commented. More than once the commentators 
were themselves philosophers worthy of consideration. 
Such were in the East, Avicenna; in the West, Averroes, 



MOHAMMED AND THE ARAB INVASION 23 

who enjoyed fame in the Middle Ages because he had 
transmitted to the Christians of Europe the knowledge of 
the Stagirite. 

The exact sciences received from Almanzor, the second of 
the Abbassides, a lively impulse, thanks to the learned men 
whom the caliphs attracted from Constantinople. As early 
as the first half of the ninth century two astronomers of 
Bagdad measured in the plain of Sennaar a degree of 
the meridian. Soon afterwards Euclid was expounded, 
Ptolemy's tables corrected, the obliquity of the ecliptic 
more exactly calculated, the precession of the equinoxes and 
the difference between the solar year and the common year 
better determined, new instruments of precision invented 
and at Samarcand an admirable observatory was founded. 
Still it is an error, though common, to attribute to the 
Arabs the invention of algebra and of the so-called Arabic 
figures which we use. Probably they only transmitted to 
Europe what they found in the learned school of Alexandria. 
We have from them in the same degree the compass and 
gunpowder. They excelled in medicine where again they 
were the pupils of the ancients, as was Averroes of Galen. 

In architecture also they borrowed much from the Greeks. 
Their horseshoe arch belongs to the Byzantine style. They 
cultivated neither painting nor sculpture, because their 
religion forbade the representation of the human figure, 
but their arabesques are a form of ornamentation peculiar 
to themselves. The magnificent remains of this architect- 
ure can be seen at Cordova, Granada and Cairo. 

In agriculture and industry we have devised nothing 
superior to their system of irrigation, which the peasants of 
Valencia and Granada still practise. The reputation of the 
sword blades of Toledo, the silk of Granada, the blue 
and green cloths of Cuenca, the harnesses, saddles and 
leather of Cordova, were celebrated throughout Europe. 
But this civilization like the empire in whose bosom it had 
blossomed disappeared almost as quickly as it was formed. 



24 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES 



THE EMPIRE OP THE PRANKS. EFFORTS TO INTRODUCE 
UNITY IN CHURCH AND STATE 

Difference between the Arab and German Invasions. — The 
Arab invasion began with unity of faith, command and 
direction. It was ruined by schism, division and weakness. 
The German invasion, made at random and solely for the 
sake of pillage under leaders united by no common idea, at 
first gave rise to a number of little kingdoms. It had how- 
ever taken place in countries where the memory of the 
Roman Empire still lingered, and where a new principle of 
unity, that of the Church, had arisen. Thus after wander- 
ing for two centuries in confusion and amid the ruins which 
they had made, nearly all of those adventurers finally 
gathered under the sceptre of one family, that of the Car- 
lovingians, who tried to reconstitute the state and the 
government, while the Pope with his monks and bishops 
organized the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The harmony of 
these two powers caused the brilliancy of Charlemagne's 
reign. Their rivalry brought about the great struggle of the 
Middle Ages, or that between the priesthood and the empire. 

Ecclesiastical Society. — The Roman Empire had perished, 
but so far the barbarians had erected upon its ruins only 
fragile structures. A single institution, the Church, trav- 
ersed the centuries, developing regularly in accordance with 
the spirit of its life, constantly gaining in power and forti- 
fying itself by the unity of its government. This society 
had in the beginning been thoroughly democratic with 
elected leaders. It emerged, mutilated but radiant, from 
the catacombs and the amphitheatres. Constantine bestowed 
upon it the Roman world. In the Councils it determined 
its dogmas and discipline. Thus it found itself possessed 
of a strictly regulated hierarchy, where only the highest 
dignities like the episcopacy and papacy were elective, 
while the inferior grades were conferred by the bishop. 
If we consider territorial boundaries, the bishop governed 



A.D. 350-723.] THE EMPIRE OF THE FRANKS 25 

the diocese which was divided somewhat later into parishes. 
Many dioceses united formed the ecclesiastical province of 
the archbishop or metropolitan, above whom rose the bishop's 
of the great capitals with the title of patriarchs or primates. 

In this picture we recognize the entire civil organization 
of the empire. Thus the authority, in which the whole mass 
of believers originally shared, was gradually withdrawn from 
the lower classes, handed over to the bishops and ended in 
the West by becoming concentrated at the summit in the 
Pope. This ascent of religious authority, terminated only 
in our day by the proclamation of the dogma of papal infal- 
libility, sums up the entire internal history of the Roman 
Catholic Church. But in the eighth century the sacerdotal 
monarchy had only traversed half the road, toward the end 
of which Boniface VIII was destined to lead it. 

The bishop of Rome possessed great estates in Italy. He 
occupied in the most famous city of the universe that large 
place in the municipal system of government, which at the 
fall of the empire had been conferred upon the bishops. 
Thus the Pope, in addition to his spiritual authority, had 
means of action through the income of the property be- 
stowed upon his Church, and an authority which was nat- 
urally increased at the fall of the Western Empire and of 
Theodoric. In temporal affairs he still remained subject to 
the emperor of Constantinople and to his representative in 
Italy, the exar.ch of Ravenna ; but the yoke was light, thanks 
to distance and to the embarrassment of the exarch whom 
the Lombards threatened and finally expelled. 

Gregory the Great (690-704) did much for the develop- 
ment of the papal power. In the first place he saved Rome 
from an attack by the Lombards. Then he took an energetic 
part in the conversion of heretics and pagans which before 
his time had gone on at random. He brought the Visigoths 
back into the pale of the Catholic Church, won to the faith 
England, Helvetia and Bavaria, multiplied monasteries, 
where dwelt a faithful army under the rule of Saint Bene- 
dict, and drew closer around the bishops the bond of disci- 
pline. His successors continued the work of missions. The 
new churches, daughters of Rome, showed for the mother 
church a respectful attachment. Holland and Friesland 
were evangelized. Saint Boniface, in 723 appointed by the 
Pope bishop of Germany, was about to give to Rome those 
vast provinces. 



26 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 715-741. 

Thus new Rome "was again becoming a conqueror and 
dominant. Its chief still remained the subject of the 
emperor but a rupture was inevitable. When Justinian II 
wished to remove Pope Sergius, who rejected the canons of 
the Council in Trullo, the soldiers refused to obey. When 
Leo the Iconoclast ordered the images in Rome to be 
broken, the people drove the imperial prefect from the city 
and the Pope excited the Italians to revolt against the heretic 
prince (726). The Lombards took advantage of this con- 
troversy to seize the exarchy of Ravenna and tried to lay 
hands on Rome. Then it was that Gregory III had recourse 
to the chief of the Austrasian Franks. 

Charles Martel and Pepin the Short (715-768). — After 
the death of Pepin d'Heristal (715), Charles, his natural 
son, took possession of the mayorship with the consent of 
the vassals. He was a valiant man. At the battle of Tours 
(732) he forced the Arab invasion to retreat beyond the 
Pyrenees, and at one blow saved Christianity and German 
supremacy. On the east he defeated the Saxons and 
Bavarians, though leaving much to be done in that direction 
by his successors. In the south he undertook to subjugate 
Aquitaine, still restive under the authority of the chiefs of 
northern Gaul. His renown equalled his power. In 741 
two nuncios from Gregory III brought him magnificent 
presents, the keys of the tomb of Saint Peter, the titles of 
consul and patrician, and a suppliant letter. The Pope was 
disposing of what did not belong to him; for the pontiff 
offered the conqueror of the Saracens the sovereignty of 
Rome together with the protectorate over the Roman Church. 
In his letter Gregory implored the aid of Charles Martel 
against an energetic and ambitious prince, Luitprand king 
of the Lombards, who wished to unite the whole Italian 
peninsula under his sway. Although Luitprand was a 
Catholic, he was too near Rome. Gregory desired a more 
distant and hence a less exacting protector; and he granted- 
a stranger what he refused to the Italian prince. This policy, 
which has remained that of his successors, was perfectly 
natural, because despite the precept, "Render unto Caesar 
the things which are Caesar's," the Holy See aimed at com- 
plete independence. Yet in such attempts, what evils it 
has drawn down upon Italy without ever gaining a long- 
continued success ! 

Charles had not time to reply to this appeal. He died 



A.D. 741-774.] THE EMPIRE OF THE FRANKS 27 

in 741, and his sons, Carloman and Pepin, who succeeded 
him as mayors of the palace in Austrasiaand Neustria, were 
at first too much occupied along their frontiers to think of 
Italy. But in 747, when Carloman had retired to the convent 
of Monte Cassino, Pepin despoiled his nephews and then 
decided to place upon his own brow the crown, that was 
only a mockery on the head of the Sluggard Kings. He 
consulted Pope Zacharias, and the latter replied that the 
title belonged to him who held the power. Saint Boniface 
revived for his benefit the Hebrew solemnity of consecration 
by Holy Unction (752). The last of the Merovingians was 
shut up in a convent. Two years later Pope Stephen II 
came to Prance to consecrate for the second time the mayor 
of Austrasia. Pepin repaid the Pope by giving him Pen- 
tapolis and the exarchate of Ravenna, which he took from 
the Lombards. Thus two important revolutions were effected 
simultaneously. The first was, that among the peoples, who 
had always practised election to the royal power, the Church 
cleverly introduced the contrary doctrine of divine right, of 
which naturally she was the dispenser. The second was, 
that in exchange for this divine legitimacy, which suppressed 
the ancient legitimacy of election, the king prepared by his 
donations the temporal sovereignty of the Pope. Here were 
seen two new principles which dominated society for ten cen- 
turies, and which by a logical connection of things happened 
at the same time. 

The other wars of Pepin the Short were directed against 
the Saxons, whom he vanquished ; against the Saracens, from 
whom he wrested Septimania, and against the Aquitanians, 
whom he subdued after eight years of rapine and fighting. 

Charlemagne, King of the Lombards and Patrician of 
Rome (774). — The second Frank monarchy, founded by 
Pepin the Short, reached its apogee under Charlemagne, who 
completed the work of his two predecessors and presented 
the greatest reign which the history of the German invasion 
records. Wherever his grandfather and father had fought, he 
carried on greater wars. The eastern frontier was threatened 
by the Saxons, Danes, Slavs, Bavarians and Avars. He 
made eighteen expeditions against the Saxons, three against 
the Danes, one against the Bavarians, four against the Slavs 
and four against the Avars. He made seven against the 
Saracens of Spain, five against the Saracens of Italy, five 
against the Lombards and two against the Greeks. If to 



28 BISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 768^790. 

these "we add those which he directed against several rebel- 
lious peoples already comprised in the Frankish Empire, 
as one against the Thuringians, one against the Aquitanians 
and two against the Bretons, we have a total of fifty-three 
expeditions which Charlemagne conducted for the most part 
in person. 

He had at first shared the inheritance of Pepin with his 
brother Carloman (768). When that prince died three years 
afterward Charlemagne seized Austrasia, to the detriment 
of his nephews who took refuge at the court of Didier, king 
of the Lombards. Thus he remained sole master. While 
winning his first victory over the Saxons, Pope Adrian I 
besought aid against Didier, who had invaded the exarchate. 
Charlemagne crossed the Alps, vanquished the Lombards 
whose king became a monk, threw the sons of Carloman 
into a convent and made a triumphal entry into Rome where 
he confirmed Pepin's donation to the Pope. To the title 
of king of the Franks he added that of king of the Lom- 
bards and of patrician, to which the sovereignty over Rome 
and over all the domains of the Holy See entitled him (774). 

Conquest of Germany (771-804). Spanish Expedition. — 
The war against the Saxons was begun in 771 and lasted 
thirty-three years. This still barbarous people occupied the 
lower course of the Weser and Elbe. Still pagans, they 
adored the idol called Irminsul or Hermann-Saul, conse- 
crated to the vanquisher of Varus. When Saint Libuin 
undertook to convert them, they butchered his companions. 
Charlemagne supported his missionaries, who as spiritual 
conquerors were preparing the way for conquerors of another 
sort. He captured Ehresburg and broke Irminsul to pieces. 
Then appeared Witikind, the Hermann of another age. 
Against this valiant chieftain the most formidable expedi- 
tions long proved of no avail. When his countrymen were 
forced to swear allegiance to the victor at Paderborn (777), 
he fled to the depths of Germany and returned later on to 
rekindle the war. After the great victory of Buckholz, 
Charlemagne transported 10,000 Saxon families to Belgium 
and Helvetia. He deprived the Saxons who remained in 
their own country of their assemblies and their judges, put 
them under Frankish counts and divided their territory 
"among the bishops, abbots and priests, on condition that 
they should preach and baptize there." Many bishoprics 
were established. But Witikind, who had taken refuge 



A.d. 790-812.] THE EMPIRE OF THE FRANKS 29 

among the Danes, again returned and defeated several 
Frankish generals. The massacre of 4000 Saxon prisoners 
excited a desperate insurrection. It required the two vic- 
tories of Detmold and Osnabruck and a winter passed under 
arms in the snows of Saxony, to triumph over the obstinate 
Witikind, who at last consented to receive baptism. Saxony, 
deluged in blood, was obliged to accept the harsh laws which 
the victor imposed. 

The submission of Bavaria had preceded that of Saxony. 
Its provinces were divided into counties and its last duke 
shut up in a monastery. Behind the Hungarians were the 
Avars, a Hunnic people, who had settled in Ancient Pan- 
nonia, and in an immense camp called the Ring guarded 
the spoils of the world. After fierce conflicts a son of 
Charlemagne succeeded in getting possession of the Bang 
and imposed tribute on the remnants of this people. 

On the south the Franks were less fortunate. The dis- 
aster of Bonces vaux, the resistance of the Vascons and of 
the Mussulmans of Spain allowed the Franks only outposts 
beyond the Pyrenees in the valley of the Ebro. Not until 
812 could Louis, king of Aquitaine, the oldest son of Char- 
lemagne, quarter his margraves south of the mountains. 

By those wars the whole German race, excepting the 
Anglo-Saxons of Britain and the Northmen of Scandinavia, 
was united into a single group. The foreign and hostile 
peoples which touched its frontiers, the Slavs, Avars and 
Arabs, were driven back or repressed. On the map of the 
world, instead of the confusion of preceding centuries, four 
great states were to be seen between the Indus and the 
Atlantic. These were the German and Greek Empires, and 
the Caliphates of Bagdad and Cordova. 

Limits of the Empire. — The empire of Charlemagne had 
as its boundaries : on the north and west, the ocean from the 
mouth of the Elbe to the Spanish coast along the Bay of 
Biscay ; on the south, the Pyrenees and in Spain a part of 
the Ebro with, in Italy the Garigliano and Pescara, not 
including Gaeta which the Greeks retained, and in Illyricum 
the Cettina or Narenta, without including the cities of Trau, 
Zara and Spalatro ; on the east, the Bosna and the Sava to 
its junction with the Danube, the Theiss, the mountains of 
Bohemia, the Saale, the Elbe and the Eyder. 

Within this vast circle everything was subject. Around 
the Carlovingian empire tributary nations formed a pro- 



30 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 800-812. 

tecting zone. Such were the Navarrese, the Beneventines, 
the North Elbe Saxons and the Wiltzen, all held in check 
by the counts of the frontiers. Brittany and Bohemia had 
been ravaged but not conquered. 

Charlemagne Emperor (800). — Beginning with 800 the 
master of this vast dominion was an emperor. During the 
Christmas festivals of that year, Pope Leo III placed upon 
his head the crown of the Caesars. Thus was consummated 
the alliance between the supreme chief of German society 
and the supreme chief of the Church. 

In assuming this title Charlemagne also reassumed all the 
rights of the emperors over Rome and over its bishops. 
Apparently therefore unity, concord and peace were at last 
to be reestablished in the western world. But on the con- 
trary this resuscitation of the empire was to be fatal to all 
who brought it about or who rejoiced at it : to the emperor, 
who will not have the support of a wise administration and 
will consequently be unable to carry this mighty burden ; 
to Italy, who will lose thereby its independence for ten 
centuries. As to the two allies of 800, the Pope and the 
emperor, they will soon be bitter enemies and engage in the 
quarrel of investiture and the wars of the Guelphs and 
Ghibellines. 

Government. — In spite of his Roman title, Charlemagne 
continued the chief of the German race and especially of the 
victorious Austrasian nation, whose language he spoke, whose 
costume he wore and whose country he inhabited. Aix-la- 
Chapelle was his favorite residence. But he showed a wisdom 
which had nothing of the barbarian. Twice every year the 
national assembly met around him. The bishops, the leudes, 
the freemen, the imperial agents, betook themselves there 
from the ends of the empire to inform the sovereign of all 
that took place in their provinces. The nobles met apart 
from the crowd of freemen to discuss and draw up the capit- 
ularies, of which sixty-five still exist comprising 1151 arti- 
cles on every subject of civil and ecclesiastical government. 

Missi dominici, or imperial envoys, traversed four times 
annually the districts submitted to their inspection. They 
went in couples, always a count and a bishop together, so 
as to supplement each other and to provide for all the needs 
of both secular and religious society. On their return they 
were to give the emperor a report of the state of the prov- 
inces. 



A.d. 800-812.] THE EMPIRE OF THE FRANKS 31 

Justice was rendered by the provincial assemblies, no 
longer by all the freemen but by a certain number of pro- 
vosts. A jury consisted of at least seven persons under the 
presidency of a count and with right of appeal to the missi 
dominici. Beginning with the seventh century there were 
no more public imposts. The monarch received only what 
was due him as a landed proprietor from his numerous 
dependants. His revenues thus included the harvests 
and other income of his domains, the personal and active 
service of the counts and royal beneficiaries, the gratuitous 
gifts of the nobles and the tributes of conquered countries. 
The expenses of the prince and of his agents were defrayed 
by the proprietors over whose estates they passed. More- 
over the proprietors were to maintain the roads and bridges. 
The army furnished its own equipment and lived at its own 
cost without pay. The land, which the soldier had received, 
was his recompense. 

Charlemagne tried to dissipate the darkness which the 
invasions had brought upon the world. All literature had 
taken refuge in the monasteries, especially among those of 
the Benedictines. Their order was founded by JSaint Bene- 
dict at the beginning of the sixth century. His rule 
required the copying of ancient manuscripts by the monks. 
To disseminate letters among his people, Charlemagne 
founded schools and compelled his officers to send their 
children to them. In his palace he himself established an 
academy of which he was a member. He commenced a 
Teutonic grammar and composed Latin poems. The prin- 
cipal literary persons of the period are Alcuin, an English 
monk whom he made Abbot of Saint Martin's of Tours, 
and Eginhard, his secretary and perhaps his son-in-law, 
who wrote his life. 

Thus Charlemagne sought to bring order out of chaos 
and light out of darkness by organizing the German and 
Christian society, which he collected around the proud 
throne of the emperors of the West. This effort has caused 
his name to be placed among those before which the world 
bows down. Nevertheless the attempt was futile, because 
all the moral forces of the time and all the instincts and 
interests of the peoples were opposed to its success. Even 
in ancient Gaul, political unity could be preserved only by 
an able and resolute hand. Beyond the Rhine he had built 
the disorderly, fermenting tribes into a living barrier against 



32 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 800-812. 

the Slavs. It was much that modern Germany was to 
succeed old Germania. But the day when he received at 
Rome the crown of the emperors was an evil day for Italy. 
Thenceforth that beautiful land had a foreign and distant 
master, who visited her only with his barbarous and greedy 
hordes. Torrents of blood were shed and piles of ruins 
were heaped up for centuries in the attempt to carry on this 
part of Charlemagne's work. Saddest ruin of all, so long 
irreparable, was that of the people itself and of Italian 
patriotism. 

Charlemagne himself felt that his political edifice could 
not last. The partition of his estates among his sons 
showed that even in his eyes the empire lacked real unity. 
Already the apparition of the Northmen pirates foretold 
the calamities which were to ensue. 



A.D. 812-825.] THE LAST CABLOVINGIANS 33 



VI 

THE LAST CARLOVINGIANS AND THE NORTHMEN 

Weakness of the Carlovingian Empire. Louis the De- 
bonair. — We have seen two immense empires formed in the 
seventh and eighth centuries by the side and at the expense 
of the Eastern Roman Empire. In the ninth the ancient 
continent changes its aspect. In place of the great blocks 
which formerly covered the face of Europe, Asia and Africa, 
we no longer find anything but grains of sand. 

The Gallo-Romans and the Italians spoke with slight 
differences a similar language, derived from the Latin. 
But the Germans retained their Teutonic idiom. Charle- 
magne left to the Lombards and Saxons their own laws. 
The Salian and Ripuarian Franks, the Alemanni and Bava- 
rians, preserved theirs. Thus these peoples were not fused 
and welded in one. The will of Charlemagne was the only 
bond that held them together. After his death the efforts 
of the tributaries to obtain freedom and the attempt of 
their neighbors, Northmen, Slavs, Bretons, to begin again 
their invasions, showed that the whole prestige of the new 
empire depended upon its founder. 

Furthermore the numerous partitions made among the 
sons and grandsons of the Debonair attested not only the 
ambition of those princes but also the tendency of the 
various peoples to separate. The first of these partitions 
took place in 817. It created two inferior kingdoms, Aqui- 
taine and Bavaria, for Pepin and Louis, the second and 
third sons of the emperor. The eldest, Lothaire, was to 
inherit the empire. His brothers without his consent 
could neither make war nor conclude a treaty. Bernard, 
king of Italy, nephew of the emperor, rebelled against 
this partition. Defeated, his eyes were put out and he died 
from the torture. His kingdom was given to Lothaire. 

Louis had married as his second wife the beautiful and 
accomplished Judith, daughter of a Bavarian chief. She 
bore him a son and thenceforth exercised great influence. 



34 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 825-843. 

For this child Louis formed a kingdom composed of Ale- 
mannia, Rhaetia, a part of Burgundy, Provence and Septi- 
mania. His other sons took up arms against their father 
through anger at this partition. They made him prisoner 
and reaffirmed the division of 817. They could not agree 
among themselves and the Debonair was set free. Again 
his sons rebelled, and before a battle the emperor was de- 
serted by his soldiers. He was declared by the bishops to 
have forfeited his crown, was shut up in a monastery at 
Soissons and clad in the garb of a penitent. In the follow- 
ing year he was restored to the throne and made a final 
partition in 839 favorable to his youngest son, Charles the 
Bald. His other sons were again resorting to arms when 
he died (840). 

The Treaty of Verdun (843). — These shameful wars were 
partly due to the feebleness and partiality of the Debonair, 
but also to the unwillingness of his second and third sons 
to recognize the authority of their elder brother, who 
claimed for himself the imperial prerogatives of which the 
people wished to be rid. Lothaire demanded that even in 
the states of his brothers the oath of the freemen should 
be made to him. Pepin was dead, but the former adver- 
saries, Louis the German and Charles the Bald, combined 
to resist this claim. A great battle took place at Fontanet 
near Auxerre. Almost all the peoples of the Carlovingian 
Empire took part in this grand encounter. Lothaire com- 
manded the Italians, Aquitanians and Anstrasians ; Louis, 
the Germans ; Charles, the Neustrians and Burgundians. 
In the army of Lothaire 40,000 men are said to have been 
slain. He was defeated but refused to accept this "judg- 
ment of God." To compel his submission the two victors 
formed a closer alliance and confirmed it by an oath, which 
Louis the German swore in the Roman language before the 
soldiers of Charles the Bald, and Charles swore in German 
before those of Louis (842). These two oaths, the " Oath 
of Strasburg," are the two most ancient monuments we 
possess of the French and German languages. 

Lothaire yielded. The treaty of Verdun (843) divided 
the Carlovingian Empire into three parts. Lothaire, with 
the title of emperor, secured all Italy as far as the Duchy 
of Beneventum and from the Alps to the North Sea a long 
strip of land separating the states of his brothers. This 
share included the Netherlands, Lorraine, Burgundy, Swit- 



A.D. 843-870.] THE LAST CARLOVINGIANS 35 

zerland, Dauphine and Provence. All which lay to the 
west of this track, called Lotharingia, fell to Charles the 
Bald. All which lay to the east, to Louis the German. 
This partition differed greatly from any made by the Me- 
rovingians. We see in it the first demarcations of the 
modern nations of France and Germany. The part of 
Lothaire alone was ephemeral. - The other two were des- 
tined to aggrandize themselves from its fragments. 

Charles the Bald (840-877). — He did not really reign 
over the whole of Gaul. The Bretons kept their indepen- 
dence and Aquitaine for a long time would not submit. 

When Lothaire died his estates were divided among his 
three sons. Louis II had Italy, with the title of emperor ; 
Charles, the country between the Alps and the Rhone 
under the name of Provence; Lothaire II, the country 
between the Meuse and the Rhine called Lotharingia. All 
three died without issue. Louis the German survived 
them only a few years. Charles the Bald endeavored to 
place all their crowns upon his head, but was unable to 
defend his cities against the Northmen and his authority 
against the nobles. 

Progress of Feudalism. — The possessors of fiefs, or lands 
ceded for a time, and of crown offices, claimed that their 
fiefs and offices were hereditary. This assumption was 
always opposed by Charlemagne, but tolerated and even 
approved by Charles. He also allowed possessors of allo- 
dial lands to seek the protection of the holders of great 
fiefs. At the same time the immunities, or exemptions 
from payments and from the king's jurisdiction, were 
multiplied. Thus the royal authority was recognized by 
neither the powerful nor the weak. 

The Northmen took advantage of these disorders. They 
landed along the coasts, ascended the rivers and sacked the 
cities. In 845 they pillaged the Abbey of Saint Germain 
des Pres at the very gates of Paris. Yearly they became 
more rapacious. Charles the Bald paid them money to go 
away, thereby insuring their speedy return. Only Robert 
the Strong, who as duke of France held the country be- 
tween the Seine and the Loire, offered energetic resistance. 
This Robert, ancestor of the Capetian dynasty, many times 
defeated the invaders and died fighting these pirates. 

Deposition of Charles the Fat. Seven Kingdoms. — Louis 
II the Stammerer, son of Charles the Bald, and his sons, 



36 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 870-987. 

Louis III and Carloinan, had miserable reigns. They died 
childless and the crown was offered to Charles the Fat, the 
son of Louis the German. He had united Germany and 
bore the title of emperor. The empire of Charlemagne 
was thus reconstituted for a brief time. But it was only 
the shadow of a great past. Emperor though he was, 
Charles could not repulse the Northmen who besieged 
Paris. The city was saved by Eudes, a reputed son of 
Robert the Strong. 

Disgusted at the cowardice of the king, the Germans 
deposed him at the diet of Tribur (887). Seven king- 
doms were formed from the fragments of the empire: 
Italy, Germany, Lorraine, France, Navarre and two Burgun- 
dies. Besides, Brittany and Aquitaine were independent 
in fact if not in law. The imperial crown remained in 
Italy, where petty sovereigns wrangled over it among them- 
selves. 

Eudes and the last Carlovingians (887-987). — Despite 
the opposition of the nobles, the brave Count Eudes occu- 
pied the throne. His premature death in 898 caused the 
accession of Charles III the Simple, a posthumous son of 
Louis the Stammerer. 

Under this prince the incursions of the Northmen ceased, 
because, after having seized booty so long, they now seized 
the country itself. The treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte ceded 
to Rollo, their terrible chief, the country between the An- 
delle and the ocean with the hand of the king's daughter 
and the title of duke. In return he paid homage and be- 
came a Christian (911). Neustria, henceforth called Bur- 
gundy, became prosperous under the rule of this active 
prince. Charles, whose surname indicates his feebleness, 
was deposed in 922 and died in captivity in the tower of 
Peronne. The nobles elected in his stead Robert, Duke of 
France, and afterwards his son-in-law Raoul, Duke of Bur- 
gundy. In 935 another Carlovingian king appeared in 
Louis IV d'Outremer, son of Charles the Simple, whom 
Hugh the Great, Duke of France, twice seated on the 
throne and twice overthrew. His son, Lothaire, succeeded 
him (954), but was reduced to the possession of the single 
city of Laon. On his deathbed he entreated Hugh Capet, 
Duke of France, to protect his son Louis V. The latter 
reigned only one year. Hugh Capet was proclaimed king 
in an assembly of the principal bishops and nobles of north- 



a.d. 987.] THE LAST CARLOVINGIANS 37 

ern France. Two important factors of this enthronement 
must be noted. They are, that the Capetians had the 
Church for an ally from the very beginning, and that the 
crown, now united to a great fief, could thenceforth defend 
itself unaided. 



38 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 800-850. 



VII 

THE THIRD INVASION 

The New Invasion. — The invasion which assailed the 
second Western Empire four centuries after the Germans 
had destroyed the first or Western Roman Empire, was a 
powerful cause in the dissolution of the Carlovingian mon- 
archy. The movement of attack proceeded from three 
points, from the north, south and east, and was so pro- 
longed toward the west as to envelop the whole empire. 
The Northmen were the first to appear. 

The Northmen in France. — The Franks, after attaining 
the western limits of Gaul, had voltefaced and swept back 
from west to east the floods of men who had poured upon 
the Roman provinces. Then they undertook to subjugate 
Thuringia, Bavaria and Saxony. Their foes retreated tow- 
ard the north to the Cimbrian and Scandinavian penin- 
sulas, where dwelt populations of their own blood. The 
Northmen, restrained by the military organization which 
Charlemagne had given his eastern frontier, and by the 
Slavs who occupied the country of the Oder, found every- 
thing before them shut up except the sea. So they launched 
upon the water, " the path of the Swans." Familiar with 
its tempests, the vikings or children of the fiords were 
daunted by no peril. " The hurricane bears us on," they 
said, " wherever we wish to go." At first coasting along 
the shores for pillage and slaughter, they gradually estab- 
lished themselves at favorable points and thence roamed all 
over the country. 

In this way they took possession of the Walcheren 
Islands at the mouth of the Scheldt, and of other places 
at the mouths of the Rhine, Seine and Loire. In 840 they 
burned Rouen. Three years later they pillaged Nantes, 
Saintes and Bordeaux. Repeatedly they ravaged the out- 
skirts of Paris, sacked Tours, Orleans and Toulouse, and 
reached the Mediterranean. A royal edict ordered the 
counts and vassals to repair the castles and build new ones. 



A.D. 850-1066.] TEE TEIRD INVASION 39 

Soon the country was well fortified. The invaders, checked 
at every step, began to wish to settle in some safe and fer- 
tile spot. In 911 Neustria was assigned them. Their dev- 
astations, continued almost a century, had prepared the 
way for feudalism. 

The Northmen Danes in England. — The Northmen had 
robbed France and the Netherlands of both security and 
property. From England they took her independence be- 
sides. In 827 the Saxon Heptarchy formed but one mon- 
archy under Egbert the Great. He repulsed the first Danes 
who landed upon his shores. After his death they occupied 
Northumberland, East Anglia and Mercia. Alfred the 
Great (871) arrested their progress and gave his kingdom 
an organization, the main features of which have been pre- 
served. These are : division of the country into counties ; 
dispensation of justice by twelve freeholders as a jury; 
decision of general affairs by the wittenagemot or assembly 
of the wise, aided by a half-elective, half-hereditary mon- 
archy. Athelstane, one of his successors, vanquished the 
Danes " on the day of the great fight " and drove them from 
England. But they soon reappeared led by Olaf, king of 
Norway, and Swein or Sueno, king of Denmark, who 
carried off enormous booty. Gold not proving an effectual 
means of getting rid of them, Ethelred devised a vast plot. 
All the Danes who were settled in England were massacred 
on Saint Brice's day in 1002. Swein avenged his country- 
men by expelling Ethelred and assuming the title of king 
of England in 1013. Edmund II Ironsides fought heroi- 
cally but in vain against Canute, who succeeded Swein, and 
the whole country recognized the Danish sway. Canute 
was at first cruel, but grew milder. By wedding Emma, the 
widow of Ethelred, he paved the way for the union of the 
victors and the vanquished. He made wise laws or enforced 
those of Alfred the Great and prevented the Danes from 
oppressing the Saxons. To Scandinavia he sent Saxon 
missionaries who hastened the fall of expiring paganism. 
In 1027 he made a pilgrimage to Rome, where in behalf 
of all England he assumed the obligation of paying each 
year one penny per hearth to the Pope. This contribution 
was called Peter's Pence. 

Thus in Prance the Northmen took only a province. In 
England they seized a kingdom. On both sides of the 
Channel these robbers showed the same aptitude for civili- 



40 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 850-950. 

zation, and the fierce heathen became excellent Christians. 
Rollo in Normandy was a stern judicial officer and Canute 
deserved the name of the Great. 

The Northmen in the Polar Regions and in Russia. — The 
larger number of these hardy adventurers descended toward 
the south where they found wine and gold. Others worked 
their way through the Baltic to the very end of the Gulf of 
Finland, or climbed above the North Cape, for the joy of 
seeing the unknown and doing the impossible. In 861 they 
made their appearance in the Faroe Islands ; in 870 in Ice- 
land, and a century later in Greenland whence they reached 
Labrador and Vinland, the country of the Vine. Thus they 
were in America four or five centuries before Columbus ! 
Their exiles, the Varangians, penetrated at the same time 
by way of the Baltic to the centre of the Slavs, and sold 
their services to the powerful city of Novgorod, which their 
leader, Rurik, subjugated (862). He assumed the title of 
grand prince, and began the state which has become the 
Russian Empire. 

As the Arabs, when they emerged eastward and westward 
from their parched peninsula, had spread from India to 
Spain without quitting their native southern regions, so the 
Northmen, starting from their sterile peninsulas, reached 
America and the Volga and still remained in northern 
latitudes. The former had in certain respects an original 
civilization. The latter, mastered by Christianity, were in 
no way different from the rest of the Christian nations. 

The Saracens and the Hungarians. — The Saracens were 
the Arabs of Africa who, leaving their brethren to conquer 
provinces, took the sea for their domain and ravaged all 
the shores of the western Mediterranean. Tunis, or the 
ancient province of Carthage, was their point of departure. 
As early as 831 they subdued Sicily and passed over to the 
Great Land, as they called Italy. They seized Brindisi, 
Bari and Tarentum, repeatedly laid waste southern Italy 
and even ravaged the outskirts of Rome. Malta, Sardinia, 
Corsica and the Balearic Isles belonged to them. They 
settled permanently in Provence at Fraxinet, which they 
retained until toward the close of the tenth century. They 
had posts in the defiles of the Alps to exact toll from com- 
merce and pilgrimage. Thence their raids extended into the 
valleys of the Rhone and Po. This piracy was more terrible 
and more audacious than that organized in the sixteenth cen- 



A.D. 9.50-1000.] THE THIRD INVASION 41 

tury by Khaireddin Barbarossa, whicli France suppressed 
only in 1830. 

In the valley of the Danube, through which came the 
Hungarians, the invasion had not ceased since the time of 
Attila. .There the human streams had pressed upon each 
other like successive waves of the sea, driven on by the 
tempest. After the Huns came the Slavs who still remain 
there; then the Bulgarians, the Avars whom Charlemagne 
exterminated, the Khazars, the Petchenegs who have dis- 
appeared, and lastly a mixture of Hunnic and Ugrian tribes, 
which the Latins and the Greeks called Hungarii or Hunga- 
rians and who gave themselves the name of Magyars. Sum- 
moned by Arnulf, king of Germania, against the Slavs of 
Moravia, they quickly subjected the plains of the Theiss 
and of Pannonia. In 899 they ravaged Carinthia and 
Friuli. The following year they launched their bold horse- 
men on both sides of the Alps into the basin of the Po, the 
upper valley of the Danube, and even to the other side of 
the Rhine. Alsace, Lorraine and Burgundy were devas- 
tated. The hordes of the third invasion, the Northmen, 
Saracens and Hungarians, seemed to have appointed a 
meeting-ground in the heart of France and they left there 
an awful memory. Germany at last made mighty efforts to 
rid herself of these invaders. Henry the Fowler defeated 
them on the field of Merseburg (934), and his son Otto I 
slew, it is said, 100,000 at the battle of Augsburg (955). 
This disaster hurled them back into the country which 
they still inhabit. 

The ruinous expeditions of the Magyars had the same 
result as those of the Northmen. In Italy the cities sur- 
rounded themselves with walls for the purpose of defence, 
just as the country districts of France bristled with castles, 
and the Italians reorganized their military forces, which 
enabled them to regain their municipal independence. 
Austria was in the beginning a margrave's fief, formed for 
military purposes against the Hungarians. The margravate 
of Brandenburg, in which Prussia originated, played the 
same part against the Slavs. These two immense .territorial 
fortresses at last arrested the Eastern hordes in that west- 
ward march which had begun in the early periods of history. 
The Mongols in the thirteenth century and the Ottoman 
Turks in the fifteenth, still obeying this primitive impulse, 
will make mere temporary inroads upon the Slavic world 



42 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1000. 

and will be forced to halt at the frontiers of the Teutonic 
race. No more new peoples are to be received into the 
countries which formed the Western Roman Empire. 

The invasion of the ninth century had as a consequence 
the foundation of new governing forces in Russia, Pannonia, 
Normandy and England. All these countries were situated 
on the outer verge of the ancient world. Within that 
ancient world its attacks had disturbed the states founded 
by the Germans, produced confusion and hastened the 
progress of feudal anarchy. 



A.D. 850-1100.] FEUDALISM 43 



VIII 

FEUDALISM 

Feudalism, or the Heredity of Offices and Fiefs. — We have 

just seen how the empire was divided into kingdoms. The 
kingdoms are about to dissolve into seigniories. The great 
political masses are crumbling into dust. 

The officers of the king, of whatever rank, under the last 
Carlovingians asserted the heredity of their offices or pub- 
lic duties as well as of their fiefs or land-grants. Hence 
was formed a hierarchy of possessors, peculiar in this 
respect that every parcel of land was a fief of some lord 
above the tenant and that every lord was a vassal recogniz- 
ing some suzerain. Naturally in this hierarchy the pos- 
sessors or proprietors were unequal. Moreover, various 
concessions or exemptions had given these landed pro- 
prietors control of the public taxes and administration of 
the royal justice. Hence the king no longer was master 
of either lands or money or judicial rights. This system 
was called feudalism. It was first recognized by the edict 
of Kierry-sur-Oise (877), whereby Charles the Bald recog- 
nized the right of a son to inherit the fief or the office of his 
father. 

One man became the vassal of another by the ceremony 
of homage and faith. That is to say, he declared himself 
the man of the new lord to whom he swore fidelity. The 
lord granted him the fief by investiture, often accompanied 
by some symbolic rite such as gift of a sod, a stone, or staff. 
Without mentioning the moral obligations of the vassal to 
defend and respect his lord, insure him deference from 
others and aid him by good counsel, he was bound by cer- 
tain material obligations. These were : (1) Military ser- 
vice, a fundamental principle of this society which was 
unacquainted with permanent salaried armies. The number 
of men to be furnished on requisition of the lord and the 
length of service varied according to the fief, here sixty 
days, there forty, elsewhere twenty. (2) Obligation to 



44 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 850-1100. 

serve the suzerain in his court of justice and attend his 
sessions. (3) The aids or assistance, in some forms legal 
and obligatory, in others benevolent or voluntary. The 
legal assistance was due, when the lord was a prisoner and 
a ransom must be provided, when knighthood was conferred 
upon his eldest son, and when he gave his eldest daughter 
in marriage. Such assistance took the place of public taxes. 
Certain other services were required. These duties once 
rendered, the vassal became almost the master of his fief. 
He could enfeoff or let the whole or a part of it to vassals 
of inferior rank. 

The suzerain also had his obligations. He could not 
arbitrarily and without sufficient cause deprive a vassal of 
his fief. He was bound to defend him if attacked and to 
treat him justly. Judgment by one's peers was the princi- 
ple of feudal justice. The vassals of the same suzerain 
were equal among themselves. If the lord refused justice 
to his vassal, the latter could appeal to the superior suze- 
rain. He even exercised at need the right of private war, 
a right of which the lords were very tenacious and which 
rendered feudalism a violent system, opposed to all pacific 
development of human society and injurious to commerce, 
agriculture and industry. This same principle caused the 
admission into legal procedure of the judicial combat in 
closed lists. The Truce of God, which forbade private 
wars between Wednesday evening and Monday morning, 
was an effort on the part of the Church to moderate the 
violence which it could not entirely prevent. 

Jurisdiction did not appertain to all lords in the same 
measure. In France three degrees were recognized, high, 
low and intermediate. The first alone conferred the right 
of life and death. In general the largest fiefs possessed 
the most extensive jurisdiction. Among seigniorial rights 
we must note that of coming money, exercised at the advent 
of Hugh Capet by not less than 150 lords. Moreover, 
within the limits of his own fief each made the law. The 
capitularies of Charles the Bald are the last manifestations 
of public legislative power. Thenceforward to the time 
of Philip Augustus general laws no longer existed in 
France, being superseded by local customs. The clergy 
itself entered this system. The bishop, formerly the 
"defender of the city," often became its count and hence 
the suzerain of all the lords of his diocese. Moreover the 



A.D. 850-1100.] FEUDALISM 45 

bishop or abbot, through, donations made to his church or 
convent, received great possessions which he enfeoffed. 
This ecclesiastical feudalism became so powerful that in 
France and England it held more than one-fifth, and in 
Germany nearly one-third of all the land. 

Below the warlike society of the lords was the toiling 
society of the villeins and serfs. The freemen had disap- 
peared. The villeins, or free tenants, and the serfs culti- 
vated the land for the lord under the shadow of the feudal 
keep around which they clustered, and which sometimes de- 
fended but more often oppressed them. The villein had 
only to pay his fixed rents like a farmer and to perform 
the least onerous forced labor. He could not be detached 
from the land which had been assigned him to cultivate, 
but he had the right to hold it as his own. A s for the serfs, 
"The sire," says Pierre de Fontaine, "can take all that 
they have, can hold their bodies in prison whenever he 
pleases, and is forced to answer therefor only to God alone." 
In spite of this the condition of the serf was better than 
that of the slave in antiquity. He was regarded as a man. 
He had a family. The Church, which declared him a son 
of Adam, made him, before God. at least, the equal of the 
proudest lords. 

To sum up : the abandonment of every right to the lord, 
— such is the principle of feudal society. As royalty no 
longer fulfilled the office for which it was founded, protec- 
tion could no longer be expected from either the law or 
the nominal head of the state, and was now demanded 
from the bishops, the barons and powerful persons. It 
was the sword which afforded this protection. Hence arose 
those interminable wars which broke out everywhere in 
feudal Europe, and which through their inevitable results 
of murder and pillage were the scourge of the period. 

Nevertheless many persons admire those days which 
pressed so heavily upon the poor. They admit that com- 
merce and industry had fallen very low, that social life 
seemed to have returned to elementary conditions, that 
there was much outrage and little security, that, despite the 
exhortations of the Church, in this miserable intellectual 
state passions were more brutal than in our age and vices 
as numerous. But, they say, the serf of the soil was 
happier than the serf of modern industry ; competition did 
not rob him of his meagre pittance j setting aside the 



46 BISTORT OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 850-1100. 

chances of private war and brigandage, he was more 
assured of the morrow than are our laborers ; his needs 
were limited, like his desires ; he lived and died under the 
shadow of his bell-tower, full of faith and resignation. 
All this is true. Yet nature has not made man a plant 
to vegetate in the forest or an animal to be led by his appe- 
tites. 

On many points the Middle Ages were inferior to antiq- 
uity. As to a few they were in advance. They made many 
men miserable, but they provided many asylums in the 
monasteries. Under the beneficent influence of Christian- 
ity the family was reconstituted. Through the necessity of 
depending upon one's self the soul gained vigor. Those 
lovers of battle recovered the sentiments of courage and 
honor which the Romans of the decline no longer knew. 
Though the state was badly organized, there existed for 
the vassal strong legal maxims, which through a thousand 
violations have come down to us: no tax can be exacted 
without the consent of the taxpayers ; no law is valid unless 
accepted by those who have to obey it ; no sentence is legit- 
imate unless rendered by the peers of the accused. Lastly, 
in the midst of this society which recognized no claims but 
those of blood, the Church by the system of election as- 
serted those of intelligence. Furthermore, by its God-man 
upon the cross and its doctrine of human equality, it was 
to the great inequalities of earth a constant intimation of 
what shall be carried into effect when the principle of reli- 
gious law passes into civil law. 

Great French, German and Italian Fiefs. — The feudal 
organization, which was complete only at the end of the 
eleventh century, reigned in all the provinces of the Car- 
lovingian empire. Yet the great names of France, Germany 
and Italy survived, and great titles were borne by the so- 
called kings of those countries. Yet these were show kings, 
not real kings. They were mere symbols of the territorial 
unity which had vanished, and not genuine, active, powerful 
heads of nations. The Italian royalty disappeared early. 
The royalty of France fell very low. The crown of Ger- 
many, however, shed a brilliant light for two centuries after 
Otto I had restored the empire of Charlemagne. Yet the 
copy shrank in proportion as the model became more remote. 
Charlemagne reigned over fewer peoples than Constantine 
and Theodosius. The Ottos, the Henrys, the Fredericks, 



A.D. 850-1100.] FEUDALISM 47 

reigned over less territory than Charlemagne and their 
authority was less unquestioned. 

The king of France possessed the duchy of France, which 
had become a royal domain. Enclosing this territory on every 
side between the Loire, the ocean, the Scheldt, the upper Meuse 
and the Saone stretched vast principalities, whose princes 
rivalled him in wealth and power. These were the counties of 
Flanders, Anjou and Champagne, and the duchies of Nor- 
mandy and Burgundy. Between the Loire and the Pyrenees 
lay the ancient kingdom of Aquitaine, divided into the four 
dominant fiefs of the duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony 
and the counties of Toulouse and Barcelona. These great 
feudatories, immediate vassals of the crown, were called 
peers of the king. To these lay peers, six ecclesiastical 
peers were added : the archbishop-duke of Reims, the bishop- 
dukes of Laon and Langres, and the three bishop-counts 
of Beauvais, Chalons and Noyon. Among the secondary 
fiefs were reckoned not less than 100 counties and a still 
greater number of fiefs of inferior order. The kingdom 
of Aries included the three valleys of the Saone, Rhone and 
Aar. 

The nominal boundaries of the kingdom of Germany 
were : on the west, the Meuse and Scheldt ; on the north- 
west, the North Sea; on the north, the Eyder, the Baltic 
and the little kingdom of Slavonia ; on the east, the Oder 
and the kingdoms of Poland and Hungary ; on the south, 
the Alps. It comprised nine main territorial divisions : the 
vast duchy of Saxony, Thuringia, Bohemia, Moravia, the 
duchies of Bavaria and Carinthia, Alemannia or Suabia, 
Franconia and lastly Friesland on the shores of the North 
Sea. 

The kingdom of Italy comprehended Lombardy, or the 
basin of the Po, with its great republics of Milan, Pavia, 
Venice and Genoa ; the duchy or marquisate of Tuscany, 
the States of the Church ; also the four Norman states, the 
principalities of Capua and Aversa and of Tarentum, the 
duchy of Apulia and Calabria, and the grand county of 
Sicily. 

In Christian Spain we find in the centre the kingdom of 
Castile and Leon ; in the west, the county of Portugal, 
dependent upon the crown of Castile ; on the north and 
northeast, the kingdoms of Navarre and Aragon. In Great 
Britain are the kingdoms of England and Scotland and the 



48 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 850-1100. 

principality of Wales. Between the North Sea and the 
Baltic are the three Scandinavian states of Sweden, Nor- 
way and Denmark. Among the Slavs are the kingdoms of 
Slavonia on the Baltic, of Poland on the Vistula, the grand 
duchy of Russia with its multitude of divisions, and the 
duchy of Lithuania. In the year 1000 Pope Sylvester II 
sent a royal crown to Saint Stephen who had just con- 
verted the Hungarians. Soon Christian Europe is to rush 
in the direction of the Eastern Empire, from which the Arabs 
have stripped Africa and Egypt and on whose provinces of 
Syria and Asia Minor the Turks are encamped. 

Civilization from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century. — The 
revival of letters under Charlemagne did not survive him. 
Hincmar, the great bishop of Reims, the monk Gottschalk, 
advocate of predestination, and his adversary, Joannes 
Scotus Erigena, still agitated burning questions. After 
them silence and thick darkness covered the tenth century. 
The physical like the moral wretchedness was extreme. So 
miserable was the world that mankind believed it would 
end in the year 1000. The future seeming so brief, build- 
ings were no longer erected, and those existing were allowed 
to fall in ruin. After that fatal year was past, men began 
again to hope and live. Human activity awoke. Numerous 
churches were constructed. Sylvester II cast abroad in 
Europe the first intimation of the Crusade which was about 
to set the world in motion. 

A literary movement awoke more powerful than that 
under Charlemagne. The vulgar tongues were already 
assuming their place at the side of the learned and universal 
ecclesiastical Latin. The latter was still employed in the 
convents, which rapidly multiplied. It continued as the 
medium of theology and of the grave discussions which 
began to resound. Lanfranc, abbot of Bee and afterwards 
archbishop of Canterbury, and his successor, Saint Anselm 
who composed the famous treatise of the Monologium, 
imparted fresh animation to the movement of ideas. The 
eleventh century had not closed when the fierce battle com- 
menced between the realists and the nominalists in which 
Abelard took such brilliant part. 

The vulgar tongues were as numerous as the newly 
formed nations. Teutonic idioms prevailed in Germany, the 
Scandinavian states and England. In Italy arose Italian, 
destined to attain perfection before the others. In France 



A.D. 850-1100.] FEUDALISM 49 

was fashioned the Romance, already distinguished as the 
northern Romance or Walloon or language of o'il, and the 
southern Romance or Provencal or language of oc, which 
was also spoken in the valley of the Ebro. 

The first literary use of the Romance was made by the 
poets of the time, the trouveres in the north, the troubadours 
in the south, and the jongleurs. The trouvere and troubadour 
invented and composed the poem which the jongleur recited. 
Sometimes the same person was both composer and reciter. 
They roamed from castle to castle, relieving by their songs 
the ennui of the manor. The trouveres generally composed 
chansons de gestes, epics of twenty, thirty or fifty thousand 
verses. They treated the subjects in cycles according to the 
period represented. First was the Carlovingian cycle with 
Charlemagne and his twelve peers as the heroes and the 
Clianson de Roland as its masterpiece. Then came the 
Armorican cycle with King Arthur, the champion of Breton 
independence, and the exploits of the knights of the Round 
Table. The principal poet of this theme is Robert Wace, 
with his Roman de Brut. To the third cycle belong all 
those ancient subjects which now take their place in popular 
poetry like a distant and confused prophecy of the Re- 
naissance. These heroic lays are the poetry of feudalism 
and also of the chivalry which followed it. 

The lords delighted in gathering their vassals around 
them. To some they confided services of honor as constable, 
marshal, seneschal, or chamberlain. The vassal brought his 
sons to the court of his suzerain, where as pages and es- 
quires they were trained for knighthood. Into that exalted 
rank they were initiated by a ceremony, partly religious and 
partly military. The fast for twenty-four hours, the vigil, 
the bath, the accolade, the assumption of sword and spurs, 
were among its rites. To pray, to flee from sin, to defend 
the Church, the widow, the orphan, to protect the people, 
to make war honorably, to do battle for one's lady, to love 
one's lord, to pay heed to the wise, — such were the duties of 
the knight. The tournament was his diversion. 

This new and original society not only produced scholasti- 
cism, the vulgar tongues, feudalism and chivalry, but also 
made innovations in art. To the Roman architecture, indif- 
ferently called Byzantine or Lombard and distinguished by 
a rounded arch supported on columns, succeeded a pointed 
architecture, wrongly termed gothic. The pointed arch, an 



50 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 850-1100. 

elementary and easier style than the rounded arch, belongs 
to all times and countries, but it was monopolized in the 
twelfth century and became the essential element in that 
new architecture which has imparted to mediaeval cathe- 
drals their imposing grandeur. 



a.d. 887-1000.] THE GERMAN EMPIRE 51 



IX 

THE GERMAN EMPIRE. STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE 
PAPACY AND THE EMPIRE 

Germany from 887 to 1056. — While France was calling 
to the throne her native lords, Eudes and Hugh Capet, 
Germany, on the deposition of Charles the Fat (887), elected 
Arnulf, the bastard son of Carloman and a descendant of 
Charlemagne. As heir of the Carlovingian claims this 
prince received the homage of the kings of France, Trans- 
Jurane Burgundy, Aries and Italy. Finally he caused him- 
self to be crowned king of Italy and emperor. Thereby he 
only gained an additional title. He repulsed several bands 
of Northmen and set against the Moravians the Hungarians, 
who were beginning to make as devastating raids through 
Europe as those of the northern pirates. With his son, 
Louis the Child, the German Carlovingian branch became 
extinct. Hence Germany began to choose sovereigns from 
different families, and election took root among German 
political customs at the very time when French royalty was 
becoming hereditary like the possession of a fief. There- 
fore the two royalties had a different experience in store. 
Conrad I was elected in 911. Under him began that con- 
flict, which filled all the German Middle Ages, between the 
great feudatories and the Franconian emperor. He wished 
to weaken Saxony, the rival of Franconia, and to deprive it 
of Thuringia. Vanquished at Ehresburg by Duke Henry, 
he gained an advantage over the Duke of Lorraine whom 
he despoiled of Alsace, and over the governors of Suabia 
whom he beheaded. 

After him the crown passed to the house of Saxony, where 
it remained for more than 100 years. Conrad on his death- 
bed had designated for his successor his former conqueror 
as the man most capable of defending Germany against the 
Hungarians. So Duke Henry was elected. 

He brought order out of disorder and gave Germany 
definite boundaries. He forced every man above sixteen to 



52 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 934-1050. 

bear arms and founded fortresses on the frontiers. The great 
victory won by him near Merseburg (934) announced that the 
depredations of the Hungarians were near their end. His 
son, Otto I the Great, inflicted on them a decisive defeat at 
Augsburg (955), which compelled them to remain quiet in 
the country they still inhabit. The dukes of Franconia and 
Bavaria had rebelled and were supported by the French 
king, Louis IV. Otto defeated the rebels and penetrated 
France as far as Paris. 

The restoration of the empire is the most important 
achievement of his reign. The last titular emperor, Be- 
ranger, had been assassinated. Otto wedded his queen, 
was proclaimed king of Italy at Milan and crowned em- 
peror at Rome (962). He undertook to maintain the dona- 
tions made the Holy See by Charlemagne, the Romans 
promising not to elect a Pope except in the presence of the 
emperor's envoys. By a single blow he thus restored the 
empire to the benefit of the kings of Germany, and founded 
a German domination over Italy. The southern part of the 
Italian peninsula remained in the possession of the Greeks. 
To obtain this territory without combat he secured the hand 
of the Princess Theophania for his son Otto. His succes- 
sors, Otto II, Otto III and Henry II, were unable to retain 
the predominance which he had exercised. Under Otto III 
the tribune Crescentius tried to overturn the papal authority 
and restore the Roman republic. Under Henry II Italy 
gave to herself for a moment a national king. 

In 1024 the imperial crown departed from the house of 
Saxony and entered that of Franconia. Conrad II compelled 
the king of Poland to recognize him as his suzerain, made 
prisoner the king of Bohemia and reunited to the empire 
the two Burgundies. The convention which he signed with 
the aged king of Aries is invoked by German writers to-day, 
as a claim on behalf of the present German Empire to the 
two valleys of the Saone and Rhone. In Italy Conrad 
ruined the Italian system of feudalism by his edict of 1037, 
which declared that all fiefs depended directly from the 
prince. His son, Henry III (1039), was the one emperor 
whose authority was best assured in Germany and Italy. 
He forced the king of Bohemia to pay tribute, restored to 
Alba, Royale, the banished king of Hungary, and received 
his homage. In Italy he dominated even the papacy. 

The Monk Hildebrand. — A monk, the counsellor of many 



A.D. 1050-1073.] THE GERMAN 1 EMPIRE 53 

Popes before he himself succeeded to the Holy See, pro- 
posed to deliver the papacy and Italy from German control. 
In 1059 Hildebrand caused a decree to be issued by Nicho- 
las II, which announced that the election of the Popes 
should be made by the cardinal priests and cardinal 
bishops of the Roman territory ; that the other clergy and 
the Roman people should then give their assent ; that the 
emperor should retain the right of confirmation ; and lastly, 
that in election a member of the Roman clergy should be 
preferred. Another decree forbade any ecclesiastic to re- 
ceive the investiture of an ecclesiastical benefice from a 
layman. These decrees freed the Pope from dependence 
upon the emperor and placed all the temporal power of the 
Church in the hand of the pontiff thus emancipated. 

Gregory VII and Henry IV (1073-1085).— In 1073 Hilde- 
brand was elected Pope under the name of Gregory VII. The 
Pope was about to complete the work of the monk. His plans 
enlarged with his opportunity. Charlemagne and Otto the 
Great had rendered the Pope subordinate to themselves, 
and had placed the church within the state as the Greeks 
and Romans had done. But royalty, the central power, 
was declining throughout Europe because of the invading pro- 
gress of the feudal system or the increasing local powers of 
the dukes, counts and barons. The clergy, on the other 
hand, had beheld popular faith and confidence in the Church 
increase in that same century. Its leader decided that the 
moment had come for restoring to those charged with the 
salvation of the soul the influence necessary for imparting 
the best direction to civil society, and for repressing moral 
disorders, violations of justice and all the causes of perdition. 
In a priest, such an ambition was great and legitimate. 
But had this attempt succeeded, the state in consequence 
would have been placed within the church. A sacerdotal 
autocracy would have formed to prevent all movement in 
the world, in thought, science and art. 

Gregory VII desired four things. He wished to deliver 
the papal throne from German suzerainty ; to reform the 
Church in its manners and discipline; to render it every- 
where independent of the temporal power ; and, lastly, to 
govern the laity, both peoples and kings, in the name and 
interest of their salvation. The first point was attained by 
the decree of Nicholas II and the refusal to submit the 
election of Popes to the imperial sanction. The second 



54 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1073-1122. 

object was favored by many acts of Gregory VII for the 
reformation of the clergy and the abolition of simony. To 
accomplish the third, the non-clerical princes had been 
forbidden to bestow, and the clergy to receive from their 
hands, the investiture of any ecclesiastical benefice. The 
last was to be brought about by the pontiff's haughty 
interference in the government of kingdoms. 

In the attempt to render the Church independent of the 
empire, there arose between the two the famous so-called 
quarrel of investitures. 

During the minority of Henry IV, all sorts of disorders 
had invaded the German priesthood. Gregory, imputing 
these scandals to the unhappy selection of prelates, called 
upon Henry to renounce the bestowal of ecclesiastical digni- 
ties and to appear at Rome to justify himself for his pri- 
vate conduct. The emperor retorted by having Gregory 
deposed by twenty-four bishops in the Synod of Worms 
(1076). Thereupon the Pope launched against him a bull 
of excommunication and forfeiture. The Saxons and Sua- 
bians, traditional enemies of the Franconian house, executed 
this sentence in the Diet of Tribur, which suspended the 
emperor from his functions, and threatened him with depo- 
sition if he did not become reconciled to Rome. Henry 
yielded. He hurried to Italy and sought the Pope in the 
castle of Canossa on the lands of the Countess Matilda, who 
was an adherent of the Holy See. Barefoot in the snow he 
waited three days for an audience with the pontiff. He 
retired, absolved but furious, and opened war. The battle 
of Volkshein, where his rival, Rodolph of Suabia, was slain 
by Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine and 
bearer of the imperial standard, made him master of Ger- 
many (1080). He could then return to Italy in triumph. 
The Countess Matilda was despoiled of part of her posses- 
sions, Rome was captured and the bishop of Ravenna was 
appointed Pope as Clement III. Gregory himself would 
have fallen into the hands of the man he had so contemned, 
if the Normans who had just conquered southern Italy had 
not come to his aid. He died among them, saying, " Because 
I have loved justice and chastised iniquity, therefore I die 
in exile " (1085). 

Concordat of Worms (1122). — Henry IV was victor, but 
the Church roused his own son against him and he perished 
miserably. Nevertheless it was this parricidal son, Henry V, 



a.d. 1122-1150.] THE GERMAN EMPIRE 55 

who put an end to the quarrel of investitures. The Con- 
cordat of Worms equably settled the dispute (1122). It as- 
signed to the temporal sovereign, the emperor, the temporal 
investiture by the sceptre, and to the spiritual sovereign, 
the Pope, the spiritual investiture by the cross and ring. 
The plan of Gregory VII had only half succeeded, for the 
bond of vassalage was still unbroken which bound the clergy 
to the prince. But in its members, if not in its head, the 
church remained within the state. 

As chief of the empire this same Henry inherited the 
fiefs of Countess Matilda and as her nearest relative her 
allodial property. Thus he became possessor of all her 
rich estates. The nearest approach to feudal power in the 
peninsula was thus annihilated. But the Franconian dy- 
nasty became extinct with this emperor (1125). Despite 
all the efforts of this house to weaken the general feudal 
system in Germany by conceding direct dependence on the 
crown to a host of petty seigniories and by raising many 
towns to the rank of imperial cities, it had tolerated the 
existence of several powerful vassals, and above all of the 
Welfs, dukes of Bavaria, and of the Hohenstaufens, dukes 
of Suabia. Thus Lothaire II (1125-1138) bore himself hum- 
bly in the presence of these princes. He was no less humble 
before the Pope who, when placing upon his head the 
imperial crown, claimed to confer it as a benefice. 

The Hohenstaufens. — The house of Suabia ascended the 
throne with Conrad III. He obtained a firm footing by de- 
stroying the power of the Welfs through the spoliation of 
Henry the Proud, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria. His unfor- 
tunate part in the second crusade and his death soon after 
his return prevented the completion of his work. But his 
son, Frederick I, Barbarossa, caused the imperial power once 
more to appear with brilliancy in Italy. Instead of the 
feudal system which no longer existed there, had arisen a 
medley of petty lordships and of cities organized into repub- 
lics with their senates, consuls and general assemblies. This 
political system extended even to Rome, whence Arnaldo 
de Brescia expelled Pope Innocent II (1141). Frederick 
speedily destroyed this beginning of Italian independence 
and burned Arnaldo at the stake. But by making his author- 
ity too evident he alienated the republics and the Pope 
himself whom he had just restored. His despotic principles, 
enunciated at the Diet of Roncalia by the legists of the 



56 BISTORT OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1150-1200. 

Bolognese school, caused alarm. Milan revolted against his 
magistrates. He razed it to the ground and abandoned its 
ruins to the neighboring rival cities. Hardly had he re- 
turned to Germany, when the Lombard League was formed 
behind him. It was joined by Pope Alexander III, the 
Defender of Italian Liberty. Frederick, who marched has- 
tily to destroy the coalition, was completely overthrown at 
Legnano (1176). 

Seven years later the Treaty of Constance definitely reg- 
ulated the quarrel between the empire and Italy, as the 
Concordat of Worms had regulated that between the empire 
and the papacy. The cities retained the rights which they 
had usurped. They could levy armies, protect themselves 
with fortifications, exercise civil and criminal jurisdiction 
within their boundaries and form confederations with one 
another. The emperor retained only the right of confirm- 
ing their consuls by his legates and of placing a judge of 
appeals for certain causes in each city. 

Barbarossa had not everywhere been so unsuccessful. The 
kings of Denmark and Poland acknowledged his suzerainty. 
Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, was deprived 
of his dominions. Foreign ambassadors attended the splen- 
did diets convoked by the emperor, at the most celebrated 
of which, in Mayence, 40,000 knights appeared. 

His son Henry succeeded (1190). As the husband of Con- 
stance, daughter and heiress of Roger II, king of Sicily, he 
established the house of Suabia in southern Italy. Thus 
an equivalent was gained for loss of authority in the north, 
and the Holy See was enveloped on all sides. Innocent III 
(1198-1216) resolved to avert this new danger. He had 
excommunicated the kings of France, Aragon and Norway 
for transgression of the moral code, and had set another 
portion of Christendom again in motion by preaching the 
fourth crusade. When he beheld kings abase themselves 
before him and nations rise at his voice, the Pope naturally 
believed himself strong enough to humble the ambitious 
house which persistently cherished the memory of imperial 
supremacy over Rome. In Germany he supported Otto of 
Brunswick against Philip of Suabia, and the fierce struggle 
of the Guelphs, or partisans of the Church, against the 
Ghibellines, or partisans of the empire, began. Displeased 
with Otto, who when rid of his rival made the same claims 
upon Italy, Innocent turned again to the house of Suabia 



A.D. 1200-1240.] THE GERMAN EMPIRE 57 

and caused the young Frederick II, son of Henry VI, to 
be recognized as emperor on condition of his abandoning 
the Two Sicilies. But this prince, a lover of art and letters 
and a man of easy character, retained those provinces where 
was his favorite residence. In his palaces at Naples, Mes- 
sina and Palermo, he and his chancellor, Pierre des Vignes, 
vigorously organized his Italian kingdom. To possess a 
constant defence against the thunders of the Church, he en- 
gaged an army of Saracens in his service. 

The Pope beheld with affright the firm grip of this Ger- 
man upon Italy. In the south, Frederick held his Kingdom 
of the Two Sicilies. In the centre he enjoyed the posses- 
sions of the Countess Matilda. In the north his title of 
emperor conferred both influence and rights. To remove 
the obnoxious ruler to a distance, the Pope ordered him to 
take the cross. When Frederick hesitated, he threatened 
him with an anathema if he did not fulfil the vow he had 
taken. Frederick set out on the crusade, but he did not 
fight. A treaty with the sultan of Egypt threw open to 
him the gates of the Holy City (1228). He crowned him- 
self king of Jerusalem and then hastened to return. His 
absence had afforded Gregory IX, the energetic old man 
who then occupied the throne of Saint Peter, time to re- 
organize the Lombard League, to persuade the young prince 
Henry to rebel against his father and to hurl an adventurer 
with an army upon the kingdom of Naples. Frederick 
overcame all his adversaries. The defeat of the Lombards 
at Corte Nuova seemed to place Italy at his feet. 

The Pope alone did not yield. He issued a sentence of 
excommunication and deposition against him, and offered 
the imperial crown to Robert of Artois, brother to the king 
of France. Louis IX refused this proffer to his family, and 
reproached the Pope with wishing "to trample all sover- 
eigns together with the emperor under his feet." Gregory 
then sought the support of a council which he convoked in 
the church of Saint John Lateran. At Melloria the vessels 
of Frederick defeated the Genoese fleet, which was carry- 
ing the Fathers to the council, and two cardinals together 
with bishops and abbots were captured. Gregory died of 
grief. His successor, Innocent IV, escaped from Rome in 
disguise, assembled at Lyons a council which excommuni- 
cated Frederick II, and caused a crusade against him to be 
preached. When the tidings was told the emperor, he 



58 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1240-1250. 

seized his crown, planted it more firmly on his head and 
exclaimed, " It shall not fall until rivers of blood have 
flowed." He appealed to the sovereigns of Europe : " If I 
perish, you all perish." He hurled his Saracens upon cen- 
tral Italy while his ally, Eccelino de Eomano, the tyrant of 
Padua, fought and butchered in the north. But the cities 
everywhere rose at the call of the priests and monks. 
From one end of the peninsula to the other, the Guelphs 
flew to arms in behalf of the Holy Father who for his own 
freedom needed that Italy also be free. In vain did Fred- 
erick humble himself. He offered to abdicate, to go and 
die in the Holy Land, to divide his heritage on condition 
that it should be left to his children. Innocent remained 
immovable, and pursued the annihilation of "that race of 
vipers." The struggle was becoming still more envenomed 
when the emperor died suddenly (1250). His death 
heralded the fall of German domination in Italy and the 
beginning in the peninsula of a new period, that of inde- 
pendence. 




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a.d. 1059-1095.] CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND WEST 59 



THE CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND IN THE WEST 

The First Crusade in the East (1096-1099). — During the 
Middle Ages there were two worlds, that of the Gospel and 
that of the Koran, the one in the north and the other in the 
south. At their points of contact in Spain and toward 
Constantinople they had long been engaged, in conflict. At 
the end of the eleventh century the two religions grappled, 
and their encounter is called the crusades. 

Mussulman Asia had passed from the power of the 
Arabs into that of the Seldjuk Turks. Under Alp Arslan 
(1063) and Malek Shah (1075) they had conquered Syria, 
Palestine and Asia Minor. At the death of Malek Shah 
his empire was divided into the sultanates of Syria, Persia 
and Kerman, to which must be added that of Poum in Asia 
Minor. The empire of Constantinople, the bulwark of 
Christendom, had wavered at this new invasion. For a 
time it seemed hardly able to resist its enemies, despite the 
vigor it manifested under several emperors of the Macedo- 
nian and Comnenan dynasties and the victories it had 
gained over the Persians, Bulgarians, Russians and Arabs. 

At the very beginning of the century, Pope Sylvester II 
had suggested to the Western peoples the idea of delivering 
the Holy Sepulchre (1002). Pilgrimages became more fre- 
quent. Pilgrims by thousands visited the sacred places and 
on their return inflamed Europe with stories of outrages 
and cruelties endured from the Mussulmans. Gregory VII 
took up the project of Sylvester, and Urban II put it into 
execution. At Piacenza he convened a council where am- 
bassadors appeared from Constantinople. At a second 
council at Clermont in Auvergne, an innumerable multitude 
assembled. Supporting his own majestic eloquence by the 
popular eloquence of Peter the Hermit, who had just re- 
turned from the Holy Land, Urban carried the immense 
host captive. With the cry " God wills it ! " each man 
fastened to his garments the red cross, the emblem of the 



60 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1095-1099. 

crusade (1095). Peasants, villagers, old men, women and 
children set out, pell-mell, under the lead of Peter the 
Hermit and of a petty noble, Walter the Penniless. 
Almost the whole multitude perished in Hungary, and 
those who reached Constantinople fell under the cimeter 
in Asia Minor. 

In the following year the crusade of the nobles started, — 
more prudent, better organized, more military. Four great 
armies, composed chiefly of Frenchmen, departed by three 
different routes. Those under Godfrey of Bouillon, Bald- 
win of Bourg and Baldwin of Flanders followed the track 
of Peter the Hermit. Those under Raymond, Count of 
Toulouse, passed through Lombardy and Slavonia. The 
rest, commanded by Robert Duke of Normandy, son of 
William I of England, Stephen of Blois and Hugh the 
Great of Vermandois went to Brindisi to join the Italian 
Normans, and thence crossed the Adriatic, Macedonia and 
Thrace. These 600,000 men were to meet at Constantinople. 

With distrust the Emperor Alexis received into his 
capital guests so uncouth as the warriors of the West. As 
soon as possible he had them transported beyond the Bos- 
phorus. They first laid siege to Nicsea at the entrance to 
Asia Minor, but allowed the Greeks to plant their banner 
on the walls when the city had been forced to surrender. 
Kilidj Arslan, the sultan of Roum, tried to arrest their 
march, but was vanquished at Dorylaeum (1097). On enter- 
ing arid Phrygia hunger and thirst decimated the invaders. 
Nearly all the horses perished. Bitter dissensions already 
divided the leaders. Nevertheless Baldwin who led the 
vanguard took possession of Edessa on the upper Eu- 
phrates, and the bulk of the army captured Tarsus and 
arrived before Antioch. The siege was long and the suffer- 
ings of the invaders were cruel. At last the city opened 
its gates to the intrigues of Bohemond, who caused himself 
to be appointed its prince ; but the besiegers were besieged 
in their turn by 200,000 men who had been brought up by 
Kerboga, the lieutenant of the caliph of Bagdad. By a 
marvellous victory the Christians cut their way out and 
marched at last upon Jerusalem, which they entered on 
July 15, 1099, after a siege no less distressing than that of 
Antioch. 

Godfrey was elected king, but would accept only the 
title of defender and baron of the Holy Sepulchre, " refus- 



A.D. 1099-1147.] CRUSADES W THE EAST AND WEST 61 

ing to wear a crown of gold on the spot where the King of 
kings had worn a crown of thorns." The conquest was 
assured by the victory of Ascalon over an Egyptian army 
which had come to recapture Jerusalem. 

The majority of the crusaders returned home. The little 
kingdom of Jerusalem organized for defence and gave itself 
a constitution in accordance with feudal principles, which 
were thus transported ready made into Asia. Godfrey of 
Bouillon caused the Assizes of Jerusalem to be drawn up, 
a code which gives a complete picture of the feudal system. 
There were established as fiefs the principalities of Edessa 
and Antioch, afterward increased by the county of Tripoli 
and the marquisate of Tyre, and the lordships of Nablous, 
Jaffa, Ramleli and Tiberias. The country was subjected to 
three judicial authorities: the court of the king, of the 
viscount of Jerusalem, and the Syrian tribunal for natives. 
The defence of the state was committed to two great mili- 
tary institutions: the Order of the Hospitallers of Saint 
John of Jerusalem, founded by Gerard de Martigues in 
1100, and that of the Templars, founded in 1148 by Hugues 
de Payens. Through the influence of these institutions the 
kingdom of Jerusalem continued its conquests under the 
first two successors of Godfrey, Baldwin I (1100-1118) and 
Baldwin II (1118-1131). Caesarea, Ptolemais, Byblos, 
Beyrout, Sidon and Tyre were captured. But after these 
two reigns discord brought about decline and Noureddin, 
sultan of Syria, seized Edessa whose inhabitants he put to 
the sword (1144). 

Second and Third Crusades (1147-1189). — This bloody 
disaster induced Europe to renew the crusade. Saint Ber- 
nard roused Christendom by his eloquent appeals. In the 
great assembly of Vezelay Louis VII, who wished to 
expiate the death of 1300 persons burned by him in 
the church of Vitry, his wife, Eleanor of Guyenne 
and a throng of great vassals and barons assumed the 
cross. The emperor of Germany, Conrad III, was the 
first to set out. He reached the heart of Asia Minor, but 
losing his whole army in the defiles of the Taurus 
returned almost alone to Constantinople, where Louis VII 
had just arrived. The latter was no more fortunate, though 
following the coast-line so as to avoid the dangerous soli- 
tudes of the interior. In Cilicia he abandoned the mass of 
pilgrims, who fell under the arrows of the Turks, and with. 



62 HISTORY OF THE 3HDDLE AGES [a.d. 1147-1202. 

his nobles embarked on Greek skips, arrived at Antiock, 
and tken at Damascus which tke crusaders besieged in 
vain. He brought back from tkis expedition only his fatal 
divorce. 

The capture of Jerusalem (1187) by Saladin, who had 
united Egypt and Syria under his sceptre, provoked the 
third crusade. The Pope imposed on all lands, including 
even those which belonged to the Church, a tax called 
Saladin' s tithe. The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, Philip 
Augustus of France and Richard Coeur de Lion of England, 
the three most powerful sovereigns of Europe, set out with 
large armies (1189). Barbarossa reached Asia by way of 
Hungary and Constantinople and had arrived in Cilicia, 
when he was drowned in the Selef. Nearly the whole of 
his army was destroyed. Philip and Richard made a more 
prosperous journey by a new route, the sea. The former 
embarked at Genoa, the latter at Marseilles. They put 
into port in Sicily and began to quarrel. Richard halted 
again at Cyprus to depose a usurper, Isaac Comnenus, and 
rejoined Philip under the walls of Saint Jean d'Acre, 
which the crusaders besieged. They wasted there more 
than two years, wholly engrossed in feats of chivalry 
against the Saracens and in quarrels with each other. 
Philip found these discords a pretext to return to France. 
Richard, who remained in Palestine, was unable to recapt- 
ure Jerusalem. On his way back a tempest wrecked his 
ship on the Dalmatian coast. He wished to cross Germany 
and regain England overland. Leopold, Duke of Austria, 
whose banner he had caused to be contemptuously cast into 
the trenches of Saint Jean d'Acre, kept him in prison until 
he paid an enormous ransom. 

Fourth Crusade (1202). Latin Empire of Constantinople 
(1204-1261). — Innocent III could not resign himself to 
leaving Jerusalem in the hands of the infidels. He caused 
a fourth crusade to be preached by Foulques, cure of 
Neuilly, who persuaded many nobles of Flanders and Cham- 
pagne to assume the cross. Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders, 
and Boniface II, Marquis of Montferrat, were the leaders. 
The crusaders sent envoys to Venice to ask for ships. Of 
this embassy Geoffroy de Villehardouin, the historian of 
that crusade, was a member. Venice first secured payment 
in hard cash, and then exacted of the crusaders that they 
should capture for her the stronghold of Zara, which be- 



A.D. 1202-1248.] CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND WEST 63 

longed to the king of Hungary. Already once diverted 
from its religious purpose, the crusade was again turned 
aside by Alexis, the son of a deposed Greek emperor, who 
offered them immense rewards if they would reinstate his 
father. They placed him and his father for a time upon 
the throne. The great capital was then a prey to anarchy. 
Forgetting Jerusalem, the original object of their march, 
they seized Constantinople for themselves and parcelled out 
the whole empire as booty. Baldwin was appointed em- 
peror. The Venetians, seizing one quarter of Constan- 
tinople, most of the islands of the Archipelago and the 
best harbors, dubbed themselves "lords of a quarter and 
half a quarter" of the Greek Empire. The Marquis of 
Montferrat became king of Thessalonica. The Asiatic 
provinces were given to the Count of Blois. A lord of 
Corinth, a duke of Athens and a prince of Achaia were 
created. Some Greek princes of the Comnenan family re- 
tained a few fragments of the empire, such as the princi- 
palities of Trebizond, Napoli of Argolis, Epirus and Nicaea. 
The Latin Empire of Constantinople lasted fifty-seven 
years, and was then overthrown by the Greeks, and the 
Latins expelled. 

Last Crusades (1229-1270). Saint Louis. — Jerusalem had 
not been delivered. The barons of the Holy Land con- 
stantly implored the aid of Christendom. Andrew II of 
Hungary led a fifth but fruitless crusade against Egypt. 
The sixth was commanded by Frederick II, who took ad- 
vantage of the terror with which the approach of Tartar 
hordes inspired Malek Kamel, and obtained from him with- 
out combat a truce for ten years, together with the restitu- 
tion of the Holy City, Bethlehem, Nazareth and Sidon. He 
even crowned himself king of Jerusalem (1229). Hardly 
had he taken his departure when the Turkomans, fleeing be- 
fore the Mongols of Genghis Khan, hurled themselves upon 
Syria, at Gaza cut in pieces an army of crusaders and seized 
the Holy City. At this news Pope Innocent IV tried to 
arouse Europe and launch it against the infidels. But the 
crusading spirit, waxing weaker day by day, found no echo 
save in the soul of Saint Louis, king of France. During an 
illness he made a vow to go and deliver Jerusalem. Despite 
the entreaties of his whole court and even of his mother, the 
devout Blanche of Castile, he embarked at Aigues Mortes 
with a powerful army (1248). He wintered at Cyprus. The 



64 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1248-1270. 

crusaders had comprehended that the keys of Jerusalem 
were in Cairo. When spring came they set sail for Egypt 
and mastered Damietta. But their sluggishness ruined 
everything. Insubordination burst out in the army. De- 
bauches produced epidemics. Delayed a month at the canal 
of Aschmoum, after crossing it they suffered the disaster of 
Mansourah through the imprudence of Robert of Artois. 
During the retreat they were decimated by the pest and 
harassed by the Mussulmans who captured their king, 
Saint Louis. He paid a million gold besants as ransom, 
then crossed over to Palestine and remained there three 
years, employing his influence in maintaining harmony and 
his resources in fortifying the cities. 

He had managed this great expedition very badly. Six- 
teen years later he attempted another. In 1270 his brother 
Charles of Anjou, king of the Two Sicilies, persuaded him 
that the Tunisian Mussulmans must be attacked, whose 
threats made him anxious as to the fate of the Sicilian 
kingdom. Under the walls of Tunis the Christians en- 
countered famine and pestilence from which Saint Louis 
died. The princes who had accompanied him were paid 
to withdraw, and Charles of Anjou made a treaty advan- 
tageous to his Sicilian subjects. This crusade was the 
last. 

Results of the Crusades in the East. — Those great expedi- 
tions, in which France played the principal part, devoured* 
uncounted multitudes and failed in their object. The Holy 
Land remained in the hands of the infidels. Still Europe 
and Asia were brought closer together. In Europe itself, 
the Christian nations formed relations, and in each country 
all classes of the population became somewhat united. The 
crusades developed commerce and enlarged the horizon of 
thought. They opened the East to Christian travellers and 
to the merchants of Marseilles, Barcelona, Pisa, Genoa and 
Venice. To manufactures they revealed new processes and to 
the soil new plants such as the mulberry, maize and sugar- 
cane. Feudalism was shaken by the gaps made in its ranks, 
and by the forced sale of lands to which many crusaders had 
recourse to obtain the money requisite for the journey. The 
communal movement derived greater strength, and the en- 
franchisement of the serfs received a broader interpretation. 
Finally, the crusades gave birth to the Knights Templars 
and to the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem who de- 



a.d. 1095-1230.] CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND WEST 65 

fended the Holy Land, as well as to the Knights of the 
Teutonic Order, who soon quitted the East to subdue and 
convert the pagans on the shores of the Baltic. Heraldry 
as a means of distinguishing individuals and companies was 
a product of the crusades. 

The new religious orders which arose were an effect of 
the religious movement of which the crusades were them- 
selves the consequence, and the mendicant friars are to be 
placed beside the soldier monks. The Franciscans who 
gave rise to the Kecollets, the Cordeliers, and the Capucins, 
date from 1215; the Dominicans, or Jacobins, from 1216. 
Removed from the control of the bishops, they were the 
army of the Holy See. Possessing nothing, living on alms, 
they roamed the world over to carry the Gospel wherever a 
too wealthy clergy no longer carried it, amid the poor, 
along the highways, at the cross-roads and in the public 
squares. The bishops disputed the right of the Pope to 
grant to the mendicant friars the privilege of preaching and 
filling the functions of parish priests. To them Saint 
Thomas Aquinas replied : " If a bishop can delegate his 
powers in his diocese, the Pope has the right to do the same 
in Christendom." It will be seen that ultramontanism is 
not a thing of yesterday. It is not Christian in its incep- 
tion, for the Gospel knows it not ; but it is the fundamental 
principle and the necessary logic of Roman Catholicism. 

Crusades of the West. — In the East the Crusades failed. 
In the West they succeeded ; for they founded the two great 
states of Prussia and Spain and accomplished the political 
unity of France. 

In the interval between the first and second crusades, 
the burghers of Bremen and Lubeck founded in the Holy 
Land a hospital under the charge of Germans for the bene- 
fit of their fellow-countrymen. Everything at Jerusalem 
was taking on a religious and military form. The attend- 
ants of this hospital were transformed into an armed cor- 
poration, called the Teutonic Order, which speedily acquired 
great possessions, so that its chief was raised by Frederick 
II to the rank of prince of the empire. To this order a 
regent of Poland in 1230 intrusted the task of conquer- 
ing and converting the Borussi or Prussians between the 
Niemen and the Vistula. They were successful in this 
undertaking and built the fortresses of Konigsburg and 
Marienburg to overawe the defeated tribe. The Knights of 



66 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1200-1215. 

Christ, or Brothers of the Sword, subjugated the neighbor- 
ing regions at the same time. When they united with the 
Teutonic Order, Prussia, Esthonia, Livonia and Courland, 
hitherto barbarous and pagan, were attached to the Euro- 
pean community. Until the fifteenth century the Order 
exercised a preponderating power in the north. In the 
sixteenth century its Grand Master secularized this ecclesi- 
astical principality, which then fell to the Electors of 
Brandenburg. 

The crusade against the heathen of the Baltic caused civi- 
lization to germinate in a savage country. The crusade 
which Simon de Montfort directed against the Albigenses 
stifled civilization in a rich and prosperous region. 

The population of southern France was the mixed off- 
spring of different races. There religious opinions had 
sprung up which differed greatly from the prevailing faith. 
The people were called Albigenses from their capital, Albi. 
Innocent III resolved to stamp out this nest of heresy. To 
Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse, he sent the monk Pierre 
de Castelnau as a papal legate to demand the expulsion of 
the heretics, but he obtained no satisfaction. Raymond 
was then excommunicated (1207), whereupon he employed 
threats. One of his knights assassinated the legate at a 
ford of the Rhone. The monks of Citeaux at once preached 
a crusade of extermination. The same indulgences were 
promised as for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. As the perils 
were less and the profit more sure, men rushed against the 
Albigenses in crowds. Among their assailants were the 
Duke of Burgundy, the Counts of Nevers, Auxerre and 
Geneva, the bishops of Reims, Sens, Rouen and Autun 
and many other dignitaries. Simon de Montfort, a petty 
noble from the vicinity of Paris, ambitious, fanatical and 
cruel, was the chief commander. The war was merciless. 
At Beziers 30,000 persons were butchered and everywhere 
else in proportion. Raymond VI was defeated at Castel- 
naudary and Pedro II, king of Aragon, was slain at the 
battle of Muret (1213). The Council of the Lateran be- 
stowed the fiefs of the Count of Toulouse upon Simon de 
Montfort. Southern France was crushed by the French of 
the north. The brilliant civilization of those provinces was 
smothered by rude hands. Like a funereal and ever-men- 
acing spectre, the tribunal of the Inquisition established 
itself on the blood-stained ruins, a tribunal that has slain so 



a.d. 1215-1229.] CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND WEST 67 

many human beings without succeeding in destroying liberty 
of thought. 

Louis, the son of Philip Augustus, came finally to take 
part in this crusade. In their misery these people of Langue- 
doc had bethought themselves of the king of France. Mont- 
pellier surrendered to him. When Simon de Montfort was 
slain at the siege of Toulouse, his son ceded to Louis IX 
(1229) the provinces which the Pope had given his father, 
but which he could not retain amid the universal execration 
of his subjects. Thus neither Montfort nor his race profited 
from this great iniquity. The entire political benefit of the 
crusade accrued to the house of France, which had at first 
remained a stranger to it. 

When Charles Martel and Pepin the Short expelled the 
Arabs from France, they were satisfied with driving them 
over the Pyrenees into the Iberian peninsula. There Mus- 
sulmans and Christians found themselves constantly facing 
each other. Thus the history of Spain through the Middle 
Ages is that of a crusade six centuries long. After the bat- 
tle of Xeres in 711, Pelayo and his comrades took refuge 
in the Asturias, behind the Cantabrian Pyrenees, where 
Gihon was their first capital. Oviedo became their capital 
in 760, when they had advanced a step toward the south. 
Still later it was Leon whose name the kingdom appropri- 
ated. Charlemagne protected them. From the Marches, 
which he founded north of the Ebro, emerged the Christian 
states of Navarre and Barcelona, between which the lords 
of Aragon and the counts of Castile founded fiefs which 
were to become mighty kingdoms. So along the north of 
Spain there was a series of Christian states, buttressed upon 
the mountains like fortresses, yet advancing in battle array 
toward the south. At the end of the ninth century Alphonso 
the Great, king of Oviedo, had already attained and passed 
the Douro. In the tenth century the caliphate of Cordova 
showed fresh vigor. The Christians fell back in turn before 
the victorious sword of Abderrahman III, who defeated 
them at Simancas. Likewise they were worsted by the 
famous Almanzor, who wrested from them all the places on 
the banks of the Ebro and Douro including Leon itself. 
But when this victor of fifty battles had himself suffered 
defeat at Calatanazor (998), the power of the caliphate fell 
with him. In the eleventh century the caliphate of Cordova 
was broken and the Christians drew closer together. San- 



68 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1000-1108. 

cho III, king of Navarre, about 1000, acquired Castile by- 
marriage and gave it together with the title of king to his 
second son, Ferdinand, who married a daughter of the king 
of Leon (1035). In the same manner he erected the county 
of Jacca or Aragon into a kingdom for his third son, 
Raniiro II, while the eldest, Garcias, inherited Navarre. 

Thus four Christian kingdoms were founded and united 
by family alliances. Three, Navarre, Castile and Aragon, 
belonged to the sons of Sancho. The fourth, Leon, remained 
separate, but the male line of the descendants of Pelayo be- 
coming extinct, the Council of the Asturias gave the crown 
to Ferdinand, thereby uniting Leon and Castile (1037). 
Internal affairs caused the Spaniards to forget for a time 
their struggle against the Moors, but when the holy war 
became popular in Europe Alphonso VI began again to 
carry forward the cross. In 1085 he seized Toledo, which 
once more became the capital and metropolis as it had been 
under the Visigoths. Henceforth the Christians, who had 
set out from the Asturias, were established in the heart of 
the peninsula. Five years later Henry of Burgundy, great 
grandson of Robert king of France, who had distinguished 
himself at the taking of Toledo, took possession of Oporto 
at the mouth of the Douro, which was erected for him into 
a county of Portugal by Alphonso. Almost simultaneously 
the famous Cid Rodrigo de Rivar, the hero of Spanish 
romance, advancing from victory to victory along the 
Mediterranean, seized Valencia (1094). At last in 1118 
Alphonso I, king of Aragon, won a capital as king of 
Castile by mastering Saragossa. 

The Arabs, enervated, divided and consequently van- 
quished, called successively to their aid two hordes of Afri- 
can Moors. These were the Almoravides and Almohades, 
sectaries who claimed to simplify the religion of Mohammed. 
The former, summoned in 1086 by Aben Abed king of 
Seville, arrived under the leadership of their chief Yusuf, 
the founder of Morocco (1069), cut in pieces the Christian 
army at Zalaca and repaid themselves for this service at 
the expense of those who had called them thither. They 
even recaptured Valencia on the death of the Cid (1099), 
took possession of the Balearic Isles and in 1108 at Ucles 
won over Alphonso VI a battle as sanguinary as that of 
Zalaca. There however their successes ended. Toledo 
repulsed them many times. Alphonso, son of Henry of 



A.D. 1108-1492.] CRUSADES IJST THE EAST AND WEST 69 

Burgundy, who assumed before the combat the title of king 
of Portugal, won a complete victory over them at Iurique 
(1139), which rendered him master of the banks of the 
Tagus and of several places beyond that river. 

The Almohades did not come from Morocco until the 
middle of the following century. When they made their 
appearance in 1210, 400,000 strong, all Europe took alarm. 
Pope Innocent III caused a crusade to be preached for the 
succor of the Spanish Christians. The Spanish kings formed 
a coalition and destroyed their enemies at the decisive 
battle of Las Navas. de Tolosa, which ended the great inva- 
sions from Africa. This achievement had been largely aided 
by the Spanish military Orders of Alcantara, Calatrava and 
Saint James of Castile, and by the Portuguese Order of 
Evora. 

The domination of the Almohades had finally ended in 
bloody anarchy. Cordova, Seville, Murcia and many other 
places fell into the power of the king of Castile. Mean- 
while Jayme I, the Conqueror, king of Aragon, subjugated 
the kingdom of Valencia and the Balearic Islands (1244), 
and Portugal, regaining the province of Algarve in 1270, 
assumed its definite territorial form. At the close of the 
thirteenth century the Moors possessed only the little king- 
dom of Granada, which was completely surrounded by the 
sea and by the possessions of the king of Castile. But in 
this contracted space, recruited by their coreligionists whom 
the Christians expelled from the conquered cities, they main- 
tained themselves with a vigor which deferred their ruin 
for two centuries. Occupied with foreign affairs, the 
Spaniards suspended the holy war until 1492. 

The crusade of Jerusalem failed though it contributed 
general results to the civilization of the Middle Ages. The 
crusade of Spain, without consequence so far as the social 
state of Europe was then concerned, changed the face of 
that peninsula and reacted in the sixteenth century upon 
modern Europe. It wrested the country from the Moors 
to give it to the Christians. The little kingdom of Portu- 
gal supposed that it was pursuing the crusade beyond the 
seas when it discovered the Cape of Good Hope. In that 
war of eight centuries' duration, the kings of Castile and 
Aragon developed an ambition which impelled them as well 
as their subjects to many enterprises. Their military habits 
were to make them the mercenaries of Charles V and Philip 



70 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES 

IT, rather than the peaceful and active heirs of the manu- 
factures, the commerce and the brilliant civilization of the 
Arabs. 

Why did these two crusades result so differently ? Simply 
because of distance. Palestine adjoined the land of Mecca. 
Spain was in sight of Rome. Jerusalem, at the extreme 
limit of the Catholic world, was bound to remain in the 
hands of the Mussulmans, just as Toledo, the last stage of 
Islam in the West, was bound to fall into the hands of the 
Christians. Geography explains much in history. 



A.d. 987-1200.] SOCIETY IN 12TH AND 13TH CENTURIES 71 



XI 

SOCIETY IN THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH 
CENTURIES 

Progress in the Cities. — Since the fall of the Carlovingian 
empire three facts have been noted: the establishment of 
feudalism, the struggle between the Pope and the emperor 
for the control of Italy and the domination of the world, 
and lastly, the crusades. A fourth fact, resulting from the 
other three, in its turn had serious consequences. This was 
the reconstitution of the class of freemen. Let us indicate 
the character of this fact before returning to the special 
study of the states. 

As early as 987 the villeins of Normandy had risen. 
But feudalism was still too strong and they were crushed. 
Although the nobles retained the control of the country dis- 
tricts, the villeins in the cities became bold and audacious 
behind their walls, and because of their numbers. In 1067 
the city of Mans took arms against its lord. This was the 
beginning of that communal movement, which from the 
eleventh to the fourteenth century showed itself throughout 
Europe. Like Mans, cities in northern France and the 
Netherlands extorted from their civil or religious lords 
communal charters which assured to the inhabitants guar- 
antees for the security of person and property, and juris- 
diction to the municipal magistrates. These privileges, 
obtained generally by insurrection in the communes, were 
gained in the royal cities by concessions from the king. 
South of the Loire many cities retained or revived the 
organization which they had possessed under the Roman 
Empire. By these different causes there was formed, little 
by little, under the shelter of these privileges and of the 
security they bestowed, a burgher class which grew rich 
through manufactures and commerce. It formed powerful 
corporations, filled the universities and acquired learning, 
especially of the laws, at the same time as wealth. Its 
merchants will be called by Saint Louis into his council. 



12 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1200-1300. 

Its jurists will guide the French kings in their struggle 
against feudalism. Its burgesses will enter the States 
General of Philip the Fair, and will then form an order in 
the kingdom as the Third Estate. 

In England the cities sent deputies to the parliament of 
1264. In the parliament of 1295, 120 cities and boroughs 
were represented. Italy early had her republics. The 
Lombard League, when victorious over Frederick Barbarossa, 
imposed on him the Treaty of Constance (1183), which legal- 
ized their encroachments. North of the Alps the emperor, 
with a view to weakening feudalism, made the cities depend 
directly upon himself. For the sake of mutual protection 
they formed unions among themselves, the most famous of 
which was the great commercial Hanseatic League whose 
banner waved from London to Novgorod. 

This progress in the city population brought about similar 
progress in the rural population. As early as the tAvelfth 
century serfs were admitted as witnesses in courts of jus- 
tice, and the Popes had demanded their emancipation. Thus 
enfranchisements became common, for the lords began to 
understand that they would be the gainers in having upon 
their lands industrious freemen, rather than serfs "who 
neglect their work and say they are working for others." 

The burghers, villeins and serfs found a powerful auxil- 
iary in Roman law, the study of which the kings encouraged 
as favorable to their authority. Based upon natural equity 
and common advantage, it permitted the legists to labor in 
a thousand ways for the overthrow of personal and terri- 
torial servitude, the two forms of bondage in the Middle 
Ages. In the thirteenth century began that sullen conflict 
between rational rights and feudal rights, which in France 
was destined to end only in the French Revolution of 1789. 

Intellectual Progress. — With more order in the state, 
more labor in the cities, more ease in families, other and 
intellectual wants arose, schools were multiplied, new 
branches of study introduced and national literatures 
begun. 

The twelfth century had resounded with the mighty 
rival voices of the Breton philosopher Abelard, who 
championed a certain degree of liberty of thought, and of 
Saint Bernard, the apostle of dogmatic authority. The 
thousands of scholars who thronged around Abelard were 
the beginning of the University of Paris. In 1200 the 



A.d. 1100-1300.] SOCIETY IN 12TH AND 1STH CENTURIES 73 

Studium, called later the University of Paris, was endowed 
by Philip Augustus with its first privileges, one of which 
made it accountable only to the ecclesiastical tribunals. 
It served as a model for Montpellier, Orleans, Oxford, 
Cambridge, Salamanca and many other famous seats. It 
soon became a centre of scholastic learning, an arena of 
ideas. Its opinion was authoritative in the gravest con- 
troversies, and the most eminent men issued from its ranks. 
The two recently created mendicant orders, the Dominicans 
and Franciscans, reckoned among their members men of 
genius like Saint Thomas Aquinas who in his Summa 
Tlieologm undertook to record all that is known touching 
the relations of God and man, and Saint Bonaventura, the 
Seraphic Doctor. We must also mention the German Albert 
the Great ; the Englishman Roger Bacon, a worthy prede- 
cessor of the other Bacon ; the Scotchman Duns Scotus ; and, 
lastly, the encyclopedist of that century, the author of the 
Speculum Majus, Vincent de Beauvais. 

But with the exception of Bacon, who discovered or in his 
writings hinted at the composition of gunpowder, at the 
magnifying-glass and the air-pump, they all lived upon the 
remnants of ancient learning and made no additions thereto. 
Thus old and new errors were popular. Men believed in 
astrology, or the influence of the stars upon human life, and 
in alchemy, which caused them to seek the philosopher's 
stone or the means of converting other metals into gold. 
Sorcerers abounded. 

National Literatures. — In proportion as the individuality 
of peoples took on shape, national literatures developed. The 
epic, or heroic ballad, indeed was declining. Martin of 
Troyes subsequent to 1160 spun out the legend of Arthur 
into a tedious, eight-syllabled poem, and Guillaume de Lorris, 
who died in 1260, wrote the Romance of the Rose, full of 
attenuated ideas and cold allegories. French prose had its 
birth with Geoffroy de Villehardouin whose quaint book, 
The Conquest of Constantinople, is still read, and with 
Joinville who after the seventh crusade composed his 
Memoirs in more finished style, thereby affording a fore- 
taste of Froissart. The literature of southern France after 
furnishing brilliant troubadours had perished, drowned in 
the blood of the Albigenses. 

German literature shone under the Hohenstaufens, but 
mostly as a reflection from the French. Wolfram von 



74 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1100-1300. 

Eschenbach in Suabia imitated the epic songs of the Car- 
lovingian or Arthurian cycles. The Nibelungenlied, 
however, reveals its distinctively German origin, but the 
meistersingers and minnesingers, whose theme was love, drew 
their inspiration from Provencal poetry. German prose is 
hardly visible in a few rare moments of the thirteenth cen- 
tury. In Italy Dante was born in 1265. Spain had her war- 
songs in the romances of Bernardo del Carpio, the children 
of Lara, and the Cid. England was still too much engrossed 
with welding into a single idiom the Saxon-German and the 
Norman-French to produce any marked literary works. 
Her first great poet, Chaucer, belongs to the following age. 

Architecture, the characteristic art of the Middle Ages, 
attained its perfection in the thirteenth century. Then it 
was simple, severe, grand, while in the following century 
♦ it was to become florid and flamboyant. In France it pro- 
duced Notre Dame de Paris, Notre Dame de Chartres, the 
Sainte Chapelle, the cathedrals of Amiens, Reims, Strasburg, 
Bourges, Sens, Coutances and many more. Corporations of 
lay architects were formed. Lanfranc and Guillaume de 
Sens labored together in the construction of Canterbury 
cathedral. Pierre de Bonneuil went to Sweden to build 
the cathedral of Upsala (1258). Maitre Jean in the same 
century erected the cathedral of Utrecht and French artisans 
worked on that of Milan. 

The sculpture is heavy, but the stained glass windows of 
the churches were magnificent, and the miniature-painters 
embellished the missals with delicate masterpieces. 



987.] FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE 75 



XII 

FORMATION OP THE KINGDOM OP PRANCE 
(987-1388) 

First Capetians (987-1108). — While feudal Europe was 
thronging the roads which led to Jerusalem, the great mod- 
ern nations were assuming their outlines. Italy separated 
from Germany. France sought to separate herself from 
England, and Spain endeavored to rid herself of the Moors. 
The Capetian royal house was weak in the beginning, though 
it undertook the first internal organization of France. Hugh 
Capet spent his reign of nine years (987-996) in battling 
against the last representative of the Carlovingian family, 
and in seeking recognition in the south, wherein he did not 
succeed. His son Robert, crowned during his father's life 
so as to assure his succession, reigned piously although ex- 
communicated for having married Bertha, his relative. He 
was wise enough to refuse the offered crown of Italy, but 
inherited the duchy of Burgundy. Henry I and Philip I 
lived in obscurity. The latter took no part in the first 
crusade or in the conquest of England by his Norman vas- 
sals. In fact from the ninth to the twelfth century French 
royalty existed only in name, because the public power 
which should have rested in its hands had become local 
power exercised by all the great proprietors. This revolu- 
tion, which shattered the unity of the country for three 
centuries, was to be followed by another which would 
strive to unite the scattered fragments of French society 
and deprive the lords of the rights they had usurped. This 
revolution was to render the king the sole judge, sole ad- 
ministrator and sole legislator of the country. It began with 
Philip Augustus and Saint Louis, who restored a central gov- 
ernment. It was fully accomplished only under Louis XIV, 
because the Hundred Years' War (1338-1453) and the reli- 
gious wars of the sixteenth century interrupted this great 
internal work. 



76 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1108- 

Louis the Fat (1108-1137).— The reign of Louis VI 
marked the first awakening of the Capetian royalty. That 
active and resolute prince put down in the neighborhood of 
Paris and the lie de France almost all the petty lords who 
used to descend from their donjon-keeps and pillage the 
merchants. He favored the formation of communities on 
the lands of his vassals. The example set by Mans in 1066 
was soon followed by many other cities. But Louis, though 
gladly aiding the cities against their lords and thereby en- 
feebling the latter, permitted no communes to arise on his 
own domains. He tried to force Henry I of England to 
cede Normandy to his nephew, Guillaume Cliton, but did 
not succeed. When Henry V emperor of Germany, son- 
in-law of the king of England, menaced France in 1124, 
Louis VI faced him with a powerful army wherein figured 
the men of the communes. In the north for a brief space 
he imposed Cliton upon the Flemings, who had just assas- 
sinated their count (1126). In the south he protected the 
bishop of Clermont against the Count of Auvergne. He 
compelled Guillaume IX, Duke of Aquitaine, to pay him 
homage and obtained for his son, Louis the Young, the hand 
of Eleanor, the heiress of that powerful lord. 

Louis VII (1137-1180). — By this marriage Louis VII 
added to the royal domain Aquitaine, Poitou, Limousin, 
Bordelais, Agenois and Gascony and acquired suzerainty 
over Auvergne, Perigord, La Marche, Saintonge and Angou- 
mois. But while fighting with the Count of Champagne, 
he burned 1300 persons in the church of Vitry. From 
remorse he joined the crusade. Incensed against his queen 
Eleanor, he divorced her on his return and gave her back 
the duchy of Guyenne, her dowry. This divorce was dis- 
astrous to the French monarchy and to national unity. 
Eleanor soon after married Henry Plantagenet, Count of 
Anjou, Duke of Normandy and heir to the crown of Eng- 
land. The little domain of the king of France was thus 
enveloped and threatened by an overwhelming force. Fort- 
unately this king was the suzerain and feudal law, which 
imposed respect on the vassal, still prevailed in its full 
force. Thus Henry, having attacked Toulouse, dared not 
prosecute the siege because Louis threw himself into the 
place. The French king also found supporters against his 
powerful adversary by allying himself with the clergy, 
whom the Englishman persecuted, and with the English 



1214.] FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE 77 

princes, who revolted against their father. He welcomed 
Thomas a Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, whom Henry's 
officers afterwards assassinated when the prelate, trusting 
the royal word, ventured to return to England. 

Philip Augustus (1180-1223). — This prince, the last king 
crowned before his accession, redeemed his father's faults. 
By persecuting and robbing the Jews, he obtained money. 
By giving up heretics and blasphemers to the Church, he 
gained the bishops. By forming a close alliance with the 
rebellious Richard, son of Henry II, he increased the em- 
barrassments of the English king. At the same time safe 
but profitable petty wars secured for him Vermandais, Val- 
ois and Amiens. On returning from the third crusade he 
had an understanding with John Lackland, brother of Rich- 
ard Coeur de Lion, to despoil the latter. Richard, being 
released from prison, reached England in a rage and began 
a furious war in the south of France. Pope Innocent III 
interposed and caused the antagonists to sign a truce for 
five years. Two months later Richard was killed by an 
arrow at the siege of a castle of Limousin (1199). 

The crown of England reverted by right to the young 
Arthur, son of an elder brother of John Lackland. John 
usurped it, defeated his nephew and murdered him (1203). 
Philip Augustus summoned the murderer to appear before 
his court. John took good care not to come and Philip 
asserted his right under this forfeiture to take from him all 
the places of Normandy. That rich province, whence the 
conquerors of England had set out, then became a part of 
the royal domain and Brittany, which was its dependency, 
became a direct fief of the crown (1204). Poitou, Touraine 
and Anjou were occupied with equal ease. These were the 
most brilliant conquests that a king of Erance had ever 
made. By way of revenge John Lackland formed a coa- 
lition against Erance with his nephew, the Emperor Otto of 
Germany, and the lords of the Netherlands. Philip col- 
lected a great army, wherein the militia of the communes 
had their place, and gained at Bouvines a victory which 
had an immense influence throughout the whole land. This 
was the first national achievement of Erance (1214). 

Before Philip Augustus died, theErench monarchy reached 
the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean. The university had 
been founded, the supremacy of the royal jurisdiction vin- 
dicated by the verdict of the peers against John Lackland, 



78 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 119*- 

the kingdom subjected to a regular organization by division 
for administrative purposes, and Paris embellished, paved 
and surrounded by a wall. 

In 1193 Philip had married Ingeborg of Denmark. The 
morning after the wedding, he sent her away to give her 
place to Agnes de Meranie. This scandal called down the 
reprimand of Pope Innocent III, who long threatened " the 
eldest son of the Church " before striking any blow, but 
finally to conquer his resistance placed the kingdom under 
an interdict. Philip understood the danger of an open 
rupture with the Church. He separated from Agnes, and 
took back Ingeborg in the Council of Soissons (1201). 

Philip Augustus had nothing to do with the crusade 
against the Albigenses. 

Louis VIII (1223) and Louis IX (1226). — Louis VIII, who 
before his accession had been invited to England by the 
barons in rebellion against John, undertook a new expe- 
dition into the south. He captured Avignon, Nimes, Albi 
and Carcassonne, but died in an epidemic on his return 
(1226). His eldest son, Louis IX, was only nine years old. 
The barons endeavored to deprive the queen mother, 
Blanche of Castile, of the regency. But Blanche won over 
to her side the Count of Champagne and the war terminated 
to the advantage of the royal house. 

Henry III, King of England, headed a rebellion of the 
lords of Aquitaine and Poitou. Louis, victorious at Taille- 
bourg and Saintes, showed himself a generous conqueror 
and thereby secured the legal possession of what he re- 
tained. On condition of liege homage he consented (1259) 
to restore or to leave to the king of England, Limousin, 
Perigord, Quercy, Agenois, a part of Saintonge and the 
duchy of Guyenne ; but he kept by virtue of treaty Nor- 
mandy, Touraine, Anjou, Poitou and Maine. He followed 
the same principle with the king of Aragon, ceding to him 
in full sovereignty the county of Barcelona, but compelling 
him to renounce his rights over his fiefs in France. Louis' 
virtues rendered him the arbitrator of Europe, and sur- 
rounded the French royalty with a halo of sainthood. He 
served as mediator between Innocent IV and Frederick II, 
and between the king of England and his barons in refer- 
ence to the statutes of Oxford. 

We have related the story of his two crusades in Egypt 
and Tunis. His domestic government aimed at putting an 



1300.] FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE 79 

end to feudal disorder. In 1245 he decreed that in his do- 
mains there should be a truce between offender and offended 
for the space of forty days, and that the weaker might 
appeal to the king. He abolished the judicial duel in his 
domains. " What was formerly proved by battle shall be 
proved by witnesses or documents" (1260). He conceded 
a great place to the legists in the king's courts, the juris- 
diction of which he extended. He fixed the standard of 
the royal coinage, and was the first to summon the bur- 
gesses to his council. In short his reign may be regarded 
as that period of the Middle Ages most favorable to learn- 
ing, art and literature, and he is well called Saint Louis. 

Philip III (1270) and Philip IV the Fair (1285). — To- 
gether with the body of his father, Philip III brought back 
to France the coffin of his uncle Alphonse, whose death 
gave to him the county of Toulouse, Eouergue and Poitou, 
which were united to the royal domain. The marriage of 
his eldest son, Philip IV, with the heiress of Navarre and 
Champagne paved the way for the union of those provinces 
to the crown of France. The Massacre of the Sicilian 
Vespers (1282), which expelled the French from Sicily, 
brought about a war with Aragon which was finally profit- 
able to the French of Naples. The reign of Philip III is 
obscure. 

In 1292 a quarrel between some sailors caused difficulties 
with England of which Philip IV took advantage to have 
the confiscation of Guyenne declared by his Court of Peers. 
The war was at first carried on in Scotland and Flanders, 
one country being the ally of France and the other of Eng- 
land. Philip supported the Scottish chiefs, Baliol and 
Wallace, and occupied Flanders, whose count he sent to the 
tower of the Louvre. 

Quarrel between the King and the Pope. — To meet the 
expenses of these wars and of a constantly embarrassed 
government, much money was needed. Philip pillaged the 
Jews, debased the coinage at his will and taxed the clergy. 
Pope Boniface VIII imperiously demanded that the clergy 
should be exempt. He excommunicated whatever priest 
paid a tax without the order of the Holy See, and the im- 
poser of such tax, " whoever they may be " (1296). Philip 
retorted by forbidding any money to leave the kingdom 
without his permission, thus cutting off the revenues of the 
Holy See. The great jubilee of the year 1300 caused the 



80 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1300- 

pontiff to indulge illusions as to his power. To Philip he 
sent as his legate Bernard Saisset, the bishop of Pamiers, 
who seriously offended the king by his arrogance and in 
consequence was arrested. The Pope immediately (1301) 
launched the famous bull, Ausculta, Fill, to which Philip 
made an insolent reply. But feeling the need of national 
support for this conflict he convoked (1302) the first as- 
sembly of the States General, where clergy, barons and 
burgesses pronounced in his favor. Boniface answered this 
attack by the bull, Unam sanctum, which subordinated the 
temporal power to the spiritual power, and threatened to 
give the throne of France to the emperor of Germany. 

Thus the quarrel between the papacy and the empire 
seemed repeated. This time it was of brief duration. The 
weakening of the spiritual power could be measured by the 
rapidity of its defeat. In a new States General the jurist 
Guillaume de Nogaret accused the Pope of simony, heresy 
and other crimes. Guillaume de Plasian, another jurist, 
proposed that the king should himself convene a general 
council and cite Boniface before it. Nogaret started for 
Italy to take the person of the Pope into custody, and his 
companion, the Italian Colonna, with his iron gauntlet 
smote in the face the aged pontiff who died of grief (1303). 
The king was powerful enough to impose upon the car- 
dinals the election of one of his creatures as Benedict XI 
and afterwards of Clement V. They established the Holy 
See at Avignon, and began that series of Popes who re- 
mained at the mercy of Prance for seventy years (1309- 
1378). This period is called the Captivity of Babylon. 

Condemnation of the Templars. — Philip obtained from 
Clement V the condemnation of the memory of Boniface 
and of the Order of the Knights Templar, a militia which 
was devoted to the Holy See and whose immense posses- 
sions tempted the king. One morning the Templars were 
arrested throughout Prance without their offering any resist- 
ance. By legal process they were accused of the most 
monstrous crimes. Torture wrung from them such con- 
fessions as it always extorts. The States General, convoked 
at Tours, declared them worthy of death, and in 1309 fifty 
four were burned. In 1314 Jacques Molay, their Grand 
Master, suffered the same fate. 

Insurrection of the Flemings. — While royalty was tri- 
umphing over the great religious institutions of the Middle 



1328.] FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE 81 

Ages, the people were beginning their struggle against the 
lords. The Flemings, driven to desperation by the extor- 
tions of the governor whom Philip IV had imposed upon 
them, rose in rebellion and inflicted upon the French nobil- 
ity the terrible defeat of Courtray (1302). This disaster 
Philip avenged by his victory of Mons-en-Puelle (1304). 
Nevertheless in Flanders he retained only Lille, Douai and 
Orchies. 

The Last Direct Capetians (1314-1328). The Salic Law.— 
Under Louis X the Quarrelsome a feudal reaction took place 
against the new tendencies of royal power. The ministers 
of the late king were its victims. The reign of Louis X is 
remembered only for the enfranchisement, after payment, 
of the serfs of the royal domain. On his death his brother 
Philip V claimed the crown to the detriment of Jeanne, his 
niece. He caused the States General to declare that "No 
woman succeeds to the crown of France." This declaration 
has been rigidly observed by the French monarchy and is 
improperly called the Salic Law. Philip V also died with- 
out male heirs (1322). His brother, Charles IV the Fair, 
succeeded and left only a daughter. The crown was given 
to a nephew of Philip IV, who founded the Valois dynasty 
(1328). But Edward III of England, by his mother Isa- 
bella the grandson of Philip the Fair, asserted a claim to the 
throne. Hence arose the Hundred Years' War. 



82 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 106&- 



XIII 

FORMATION OP THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 

Norman Invasion (1066). — After Canute the Great the 
conflict of the Saxons and Danes in England became com- 
plicated by a new element. The princes of Saxon origin, 
dispossessed by the Danes, found an asylum with the Nor- 
mans of France. When Edward the Confessor ascended 
the throne of Alfred the Great, he invited many of these 
Normans to his court and bestowed on them the principal 
bishoprics. The Saxons were jealous and their leader, the 
powerful Earl Godwin, succeeded in expelling the foreign- 
ers. His son Harold, who succeeded to his dignities and 
influence, conceived the unfortunate idea of visiting William, 
Duke of Normandy. His host, having him in his power, 
made him swear that he would aid William to secure the 
English throne on Edward's death. When Edward died, 
Harold was elected king by the wittenagemote and repu- 
diated the promise wrung from him by force. William, 
accusing him of perjury, undertook the conquest of England. 
He had the sanction of the Holy See, which complained that 
Peter's Pence was not paid. The invaders disembarked in 
the south, while Harold in the north was repelling a Nor- 
wegian invasion. A few days later the battle of Hastings 
(1066), in which Harold perished, delivered the country to 
the Normans. Nevertheless for a long time the Saxons did 
not resign themselves to their defeat. The Welsh and the 
Norwegians helped them to resist. In the Isle of Ely they 
formed the " camp of refuge." Rather than submit many 
of them became outlaws and lived in the forests, where the 
Norman lords hunted them like wild beasts. 

Strength of Norman Royalty in England. — William divided 
England among his comrades. The secular and ecclesias- 
tical domains of the Saxons were occupied by the conquerors, 
many of whom had been cowherds or weavers or simple 
priests on the continent, but now became lords and bishops. 
Between 1080 and 1086 a register of all the properties occu- 



1119.] FORMATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 83 

pied was drawn up. This is the famous land-roll of Eng- 
land, called by the Saxons the Doomsday Book. On this 
land thus divided was established the most regular feudal 
body of Europe. Six hundred barons had beneath them 
60,000 knights. Over all towered the king who appro- 
priated 1462 manors and the principal cities and by exact- 
ing the direct oath from even the humblest knights attached 
every vassal closely to himself. 

This fact demands consideration for the whole history of 
England depends upon this partition, as does French history 
upon the inverse position occupied by the first Capetians. 
The English royalty, so strong on the morrow of the con- 
quest, soon became oppressive and forced the barons in 
self-defence to unite with the burgesses. Thus the nobles 
saved their own rights only by securing those of their hum- 
ble allies. In this manner by agreement between the bur- 
gher middle class and the nobles English public liberty was 
founded. Hence the nobility has always been popular in 
England. Liberty, the dominating sentiment of England, 
has created its noble institutions. The English have disre- 
garded equality, to which the French sacrifice everything. In 
France the oppressor was not the petty sovereign who wore 
the royal crown, but feudalism. Against it the oppressed, 
both king and people, united, but the chief who directed 
the battle kept for himself all the profits of victory. There- 
fore instead of general liberties was developed the absolute 
authority of the king. Before him villeins and nobles were 
equally dependent, and hence arose the common sentiment 
of equality. 

William II (1087). Henry I (1100). Stephen (1135). — 
William the Conqueror died in 1087. William II. Kufus, 
his second son, succeeded him in England and Robert, the 
elder son, in Normandy. Robert tried unsuccessfully to take 
England from his younger brother and then set out on the 
crusade. He was still absent when William Rufus died 
while hunting. Their youngest brother, Henry I, Fine 
Scholar, seized the crown. When Robert attempted to assert 
his rights, he was beaten at Tenchebray (1106) and Nor- 
mandy was reunited to England. Louis the Fat was also 
defeated, who had tried to secure that duchy at least for 
Guillaume Cliton, Robert's son (1119). 

Henry I intended to leave the throne to his daughter, 
Matilda, widow of the Emperor Henry V and wife of 



84 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1135- 

Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. He charged his nephew, Stephen 
of Blois, with protecting the empress, as she was called. 
Stephen usurped the crown for himself and defeated the 
Scotch, Matilda's allies, at the battle of the Standard. 
Afterwards she took him prisoner, but it was agreed that 
he should reign until his death and that his successor should 
be Henry of Anjou, surnamed Plantagenet, the empress' son. 

Henry II (1154). — By the renunciation of Matilda, his 
mother, he received Normandy and Maine. From his father 
he inherited Anjou and Touraine. Marrying Eleanor, the 
divorced wife of Louis the Young, he acquired Poitiers, 
Bordeaux, Agen and Limoges, together with suzerainty over 
Auvergne, Aunis. Saintonge, Angoumois, La Marche and 
Perigord. In 1154 he ascended the throne of England at 
the age of twenty-one, and finally married one of his sons 
to the heiress of Brittany. This power was formidable, 
but Henry II frittered it away in quarrels with his clergy 
and his sons. 

The clergy ever since the time of the Roman Empire 
had possessed the privilege of judging itself. When an 
ecclesiastic was accused, the secular tribunals could not try 
the case. The ecclesiastical courts alone could pronounce 
judgment. In England William the Conqueror had granted 
to this privilege, called the benefit of the clergy, a very wide 
extension. Numerous abuses and scandalous immunity 
from punishment resulted therefrom. Henry II wished 
to end all this. With the object of awing the clergy, he 
appointed as archbishop of Canterbury his chancellor, 
Thomas a Becket, a Saxon by birth, and until then the 
most brilliant and docile of courtiers. Becket immediately 
changed character and became austere and inflexible. In 
a great meeting of bishops, abbots and barons the king had 
adopted the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164), which com- 
pelled every priest accused of crime to appear before the 
ordinary courts of justice, forbade any ecclesiastic to leave 
the kingdom without the royal permission and intrusted to 
the king the guardianship and revenues of every vacant 
bishopric or benefice. Thomas a Becket opposed these 
statutes and fled to France to avoid the wrath of his former 
master. Louis VII having reconciled him to Henry, he 
returned to Canterbury but would make no concessions in 
the matter of ecclesiastical privileges. The patience of the 
king was exhausted and he let fall hasty words which four 



1215.] FORMATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 85 

knights interpreted as a sentence of death. They murdered 
the archbishop at the foot of the altar (1170). This crime 
aroused such indignation against Henry that he was forced 
to abolish the Constitutions of Clarendon and do penance 
on the tomb of the martyr. 

He submitted to this humiliation only from fear of a 
popular uprising and excommunication at the very time 
when he was at war with his three eldest sons, Henry Duke 
of Maine and Anjou, Richard Cceur de Lion Duke of Aqui- 
taine and Geoffry Duke of Brittany. Even his fourth son, 
John Lackland, eventually joined them. Henry II passed 
his last days in fighting his sons and the king of France 
who upheld the rebels. In 1171 he conquered the east and 
south of Ireland. 

Richard (1189). John Lackland (1199). — Richard who 
succeeded is that Coeur de Lion, or Lion-hearted, whom we 
have previously seen famous in the third crusade. This 
violent but brave and chivalrous prince was followed by his 
brother, John Lackland, a man of many vices and destitute 
even of courage. His crime in murdering his brother's son 
cost him Touraine, Anjou, Maine, Normandy and Poitou, 
and he foolishly renewed his father's quarrel with the 
Church. Refusing to accept the prelate whom the Pope 
had appointed archbishop of Canterbury, he was excom- 
municated and threatened with an invasion, as Innocent III 
had authorized Philip Augustus to conquer England. He 
humbled himself before the Holy See, promised tribute and 
acknowledged himself its vassal. Then he tried to take 
revenge for all his humiliations by forming against France 
the coalition which was overthrown at the battle of Bouvines. 
While his allies were defeated in the north, John himself 
was vanquished in Poitou. On returning to his island, he 
found the barons in revolt, and was forced to sign the 
Magna Charta (1215). 

This memorable act is the foundation of English liberty. 
It guaranteed the privileges of the Church, renewed the 
limits marked out under Henry I to the rights of relief, 
of guardianship and marriage, which the kings had abused, 
promised to impose no tax in the kingdom without the con- 
sent of the great council, and lastly, established the famous 
law of habeas corpus which protected individual liberty 
and the jury law which assured to the accused a just trial. 
A commission of twenty-five guardians was charged with super- 



86 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1216- 

vising the execution of this charter and with compelling a 
reform of abuses. The danger past, John wished to tear up 
the charter and obtained the Pope's sanction thereto. The 
barons invited to England Louis, the son of Philip Augustus, 
who might have become king of the country if after the 
sudden death of John (1216) the barons had not preferred 
a child, his son, to the powerful heir of the Prench crown. 

Henry III (1216). — The new reign was a long minority. 
In it we constantly behold weakness, perjury, fits of violence 
and every attendant circumstance to teach the nation the 
necessity and the means for restraining by institutions that 
royal will which was so little sure of itself. Abroad Henry 
III was defeated by Saint Louis at Taillebourg and Saintes. 
His brother Richard of Cornwall being elected emperor, 
played a ridiculous part in Germany and one costly for 
England. At home popular discontent increased at repeated 
violations of Magna Charta, at the favor shown to the rela- 
tives of Queen Eleanor of Provence, who caused all the 
offices to be conferred upon them, and at a real invasion of 
Italian clergy sent by the Pope who monopolized all the 
ecclesiastical benefices. 

First English Parliament (1258). — On the eleventh of June, 
1258, convened the great national council of Oxford, the 
first assembly to which the name of Parliament was officially 
applied. The barons forced the king to intrust the reforms 
to twenty-four of their number, only twelve of whom were 
appointed by him. These twenty-four delegates published the 
statutes or provisions of Oxford. The king confirmed the 
Great Charter. The twenty -four annually nominated the lord 
high chancellor, the lord high treasurer, the judges and other 
public officials and the governors of the castles. Opposition 
to their decisions was declared a capital crime. Finally Par- 
liament was to be convoked every three years. Henry III 
protested and appealed to the arbitration of Saint Louis who 
pronounced in his favor. But the barons did not accept this 
decision. They attacked the king in arms, having as their 
leader a grandson of the conqueror of the Albigenses, Simon 
de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. They took prisoners the mon- 
arch and his son Edward at the battle of Lewes (1264). Then 
Leicester, governing in the name of the king whom he held 
captive, organized the first complete representation of the 
English nation by the ordinance of 1265, which prescribed 
the election to Parliament of two knights for each county 



1327.] FORMATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 87 

and of two citizens or burgesses for each city or borough of 
the said county. 

Edward I (1272). — Under this prince the public liberties 
were respected and the kingdom increased by the acquisi- 
tion of Wales. In Scotland Edward vanquished in succession 
the three champions of the independence of that country : 
John Baliol at Dunbar (1296), William Wallace at Falkirk 
(1298) and Kobert Bruce. But the latter gained the advan- 
tage under the reign of the feeble Edward II (1307) and 
by the great victory of Bannockburn (1314) secured Scottish 
independence. The despicable Edward II was governed by 
favorites whom the great lords expelled or sent to the scaf- 
fold. He himself was put to death by his wife (1327). 

Progress of English Institutions. — These convulsions con- 
solidated institutions which were destined after their com- 
plete development to prevent the recurrence of disorder. 
Let us recapitulate these constitutional steps. In 1215 
Magna Charta, the Great Charter or declaration of the pub- 
lic rights, was promulgated. In 1258 the statutes of Ox- 
ford established regular meetings of the great national 
council, the guardian of the charter of 1215. In 1264 there 
entered Parliament representatives of the petty nobility and 
of the burghers, who were subsequently to form the lower 
chamber or the Commons, while the barons, the immediate 
vassals of the king, were to form the upper chamber or the 
House of Lords. Beginning with 1265 deputies of the 
counties and cities were regularly and constantly elected. 
In 1309 Parliament stipulated conditions to the voting of 
taxes, so that royalty, naturally extravagant, would be kept 
in check and made to respect the laws. Thus in less than 
a century through the union of the nobles and the burgher 
class, England laid those foundations which in modern times 
have so firmly upheld her fortune and guaranteed her tran- 
quillity. 



88 HISTORY OF TEE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 132ft- 



XIV 

FIRST PERIOD OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 

(1338-1380) 

Causes of the Hundred Years' War. — England and France, 
the latter strong through the progress of the royal power, 
the former through that of public liberty, were engaged in a 
struggle for more than a century. This is the Hundred 
Years' War, which the rashness and incapacity of the French 
nobility rendered so glorious for England. As grandson of 
Philip the Fair, Edward III had claims upon the crown of 
France, for the Salic Law had not as yet acquired the im- 
portance which it assumed later on. But at the accession 
of Philip of Valois he appeared to renounce them. He even 
paid him the feudal homage which was due the king of 
France for the duchy of Guyenne. Nevertheless Edward 
constantly cherished the hope of supplanting him. He was 
encouraged therein by the fugitive Robert of Artois, de- 
spoiled of the county of Artois, and by the Flemings who, 
being in need of English wool to feed their manufactures, 
rebelled under the leadership of the brewer Jacques Arte- 
veld against their count, the friend of France, and recognized 
Edward as their legitimate king. 

Hostilities in Flanders and Brittany (1337). The only fact 
of importance during the first eight years of war was the 
great naval victory of the English at the battle of the 
Sluice (1340). Fighting was carried on chiefly in Brittany 
where Charles de Blois, head of the French party, disputed 
the ducal crown with Jean de Montfort supported by the 
English. The death of Jacques Arteveld, killed in a pop- 
ular tumult, did not take away the Flemish alliance from 
England, which maintained its superiority in Flanders and 
Brittany. 

Battle of Crecy (1346). In 1346 the fighting became more 
serious. Edward invaded France and penetrated to the 
heart of Normandy, expecting to march upon Paris. The 



1356.] FIRST PERIOD OF THE HUNDRED TEARS' WAR 89 

lack of provisions forced him to turn northward and ap- 
proach Flanders. Philip of Valois although commanding 
60,000 men could not prevent his passage of the Seine 
and Somme, but gave battle near Crecy at the head of 
tired and undisciplined troops. The English army, not 
half so numerous, was well placed upon a height supplied 
with cannon which then for the first time were seen in 
battle, and was covered by a dense line of skilful archers. 
The French chivalry, thrown at random against this strong 
position, were riddled with arrows and strewed the field of 
battle with their dead. Edward though victorious con- 
tinued his retreat upon Calais, which he captured after a 
year's siege, and which the English held for two centuries. 
He obtained at the same time important advantages in Scot- 
land and Brittany. David Bruce was made prisoner at 
Nevil Cross and Charles de Blois at Koche Derien. 

John the Good (1350). Battle of Poitiers (1356). — At the 
accession of John the Good, France was already in a sad 
state. Calais and a great battle had been lost. Charles the 
Bad, king of Navarre, was intriguing to assert rights to the 
throne which he claimed to inherit from his mother, Jeanne 
d'Evreux. The States General convoked in 1355 raised 
pretensions which recalled and exceeded the Great Charter 
of England. They pretended to collect the public dues 
through their agents, to superintend the expenditures and 
to impose their orders on every one. The nobles refused to 
submit to the impost and formed a plot in which Charles 
the Bad was the leader. John arrested many of the con- 
spirators at a banquet at the very table of his own son 
Charles, and struck off their heads. The English judged 
the occasion favorable. Edward sent the Duke of Lan- 
caster to Normandy, and the Black Prince to Guyenne. The 
latter advanced toward the Loire. After devastating the 
country he retreated, but found his road cut off by King 
John, who with 50,000 men completely surrounded his 
little army. But skilful measures taken by the prince 
upon the hillock of Maupertuis near Poitiers, and the usual 
rashness of the French nobles gave him a most brilliant 
victory. The king himself was captured. 

French Attempt at Reforms. The Jacquerie. — The great 
disasters of Crecy and Poitiers, caused by the incapacity of 
kings, generals and nobles, brought about a popular commo- 
tion. As the king and the great majority of the lords were 



90 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1356- 

prisoners, the nation took in hand the guidance of public 
affairs. The States General, convened by the Dauphin 
Charles, expressed their will through Fltienne Marcel, provost 
of the merchants for the Third Estate, through the Bishop 
of Laon for the clergy, and through the Lord of Vermandois 
for the nobility. Before granting any subsidy, they de- 
manded the removal and trial of the principal officers of 
finance and justice, and the establishment of a council, 
chosen from the three orders, and charged with the direc- 
tion of the government. The States became bolder still. 
They established a commission of thirty-six members to 
superintend everything, and caused the Great Ordinance of 
Reformation to be issued. Thereby they asserted their 
right to levy and expend the taxes, to reform justice and 
control the coinage. Even a mild political reform was 
dangerous in the face of the victorious English. Moreover 
this ordinance, accomplished by a few intelligent deputies, 
was neither the work nor even the desire of France. Not a 
single arm outside Paris was raised in its support. The 
revolution seemed only a Parisian riot. When the dauphin 
tried to escape from the obligations imposed upon him, 
Etienne Marcel assassinated his two ministers, the marshals 
of Champagne and Normandy, before his very eyes. Such 
acts of violence discredited the popular movement, which 
was furthermore disgraced by the excesses of the mob or 
the Jacquerie. Finally Marcel, forced to seek other support, 
was on the point of delivering Paris to Charles the Bad, 
when the plot was discovered. He was killed and his party 
fell with him. 

Treaty of Bretigny (1360). — The dauphin, being rid of 
Marcel, signed a treaty with Charles the Bad and re- 
mained sole master. With the consent of the States he 
repudiated the disastrous treaty which John, weary of his 
captivity, had just concluded and agreed to that of Bretigny 
which was slightly less onerous. Thereby Edward re- 
nounced his claim to the crown of France, but received thir- 
teen provinces in direct sovereignty. Dying in 1364, John 
ended a reign equally fatal in peace or war. The duchy of 
Burgundy had escheated to the crown, the first ducal house 
having become extinct. Instead of joining it to the national 
domain, John alienated it in favor of his fourth son, Philip 
the Bold. Thus he founded a second ducal house which on 
two occasions came near destroying the kingdom. 



1380.] FIRST PERIOD OF THE HUNDRED YEARS 9 WAR 91 

Charles V (1364-1380) and Duguesclin.— This Charles the 
Wise rescued France from the abyss of misery. He al- 
lowed the foreign invasion to waste itself in the ravaged 
provinces, and shut up his troops in the strongholds, whence 
they harassed the enemy and rendered it impossible for 
them to obtain fresh supplies. Duguesclin, a petty gentle- 
man of Brittany, whom he had taken into his service and 
whom he afterwards appointed constable of France, by the 
victory of Cocherel (1364) rid him of Charles the Bad. He 
also delivered the country from the " free companies," lead- 
ing them to the succor of the king of Castile, Henry de 
Transtamara, against his brother, Pedro the Cruel, whom 
the English were supporting and whom he subsequently 
overthrew (1369). 

In 1369 the Gascons, irritated by the extortions of the 
Black Prince, appealed against him to Charles V, the feudal 
suzerain of the duchy of Aquitaine. The king caused the 
Court of Peers to declare this great fief confiscated. This 
was a declaration of war. Charles V was ready, but Edward 
was not. Nevertheless a powerful English army disem- 
barked at Calais. It marched through France as far as 
Bordeaux, but found itself reduced on the way to 6000 
men. When the Prince of Wales died in 1376 and Edward 
III in 1377, almost the entire fruit ot their victories 
was already lost. Bayonne, Bordeaux and Calais alone re- 
mained in the hands of the English. 

Charles was equally skilful and equally fortunate against 
Charles the Bad, from whom he took Montpellier and 
Evreux. He failed however in the attempt to unite 
Brittany to the royal domain. Influenced by the memories 
of his youth, he avoided assembling the States General. 
Still he strengthened Parliament by permitting it to fill 
vacancies in its own body. He favored letters which had 
Froissart, the inimitable chronicler, as their principal repre- 
sentative. He also began the Royal Library, which under 
him numbered 900 volumes. He died in 1380. 



92 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 13S0-1405. 



XV 

SECOND PERIOD OP THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 
(1380-1453) 

Charles VI. — Internal troubles almost suspended the 
struggle between France and England for thirty-five years. 
During the minority of Charles VI his uncles wrangled over 
the regency, and the people of Paris beat the tax collectors 
to death. Rouen, Chalons, Reims, Troyes and Orleans 
joined in a communal movement which started from 
Flanders, but which was put down by the French nobility 
at the bloody battle of Roosebec. The Flemish leader, 
Philip van Arteveld, was there slain. The princes learned 
no lessons from these events. Squandering of the public 
funds and disorders of every sort continued. Suddenly the 
young king lost his reason and was lucid afterwards only at 
rare intervals. His uncle, the Duke of Burgundy, and his 
brother, the Duke of Orleans, disputed the control of 
affairs. The former, surnamed John the Fearless, decided 
the matter by assassinating his rival. 

The Armagnacs and the Burgundians. — The Count of 
Armagnac, father-in-law of the new duke of Orleans, headed 
the faction to which a portion of the nobility adhered and 
which took his name. The Duke of Burgundy was sup- 
ported by the cities. A civil war broke out marked by 
abominable cruelties. John the Fearless flattered Paris 
and specially the mob whose ferocious passions he allowed 
full play. The butcher Caboche deluged the city with the 
blood of the Armagnacs, or of those who were called so. 
The duke encouraged this hideous demagoguery. However, 
the shrewd men of the party and the University devised 
the Cabochian Ordinance for the reform of the kingdom. 
This sagacious code was of brief continuance. Two years 
later the Hundred Years' War began again. 

Wicliffe. — A general effervescence was then agitating 
Western Europe. Everywhere the people were chafing 



SECOND PERIOD OF THE HUNDRED YEARS* WAR 93 

against a social order which, overwhelmed them with 
miseries. In the cities the burghers, enriched by their 
small beginnings in manufactures and commerce, wished 
to secure their property from the caprice and violence of 
the great. Some even laid presumptuous hands on the 
things of the Church. 

In 1366 Pope Urban V demanded from England 33,000 
marks, arrears of the tribute which John Lackland had 
promised to the Holy See. Parliament refused payment; 
and a monk, John Wicliffe, took advantage of the popular 
indignation to attack in the name of apostolic equality the 
whole hierarchy of the Church. In the name of the Gospel 
he also assailed such dogmas, sacraments and rites as were 
not found expressly stated in the New Testament. His 
translation of the Bible into English rapidly disseminated 
those ideas which Lollard, burned at Cologne in 1322, had 
already taught. 

One of Wicliffe's partisans even drew political conse- 
quences from his doctrine. John Ball went about through 
the cities and towns, saying to the poor : — 

" "When Adam delved and Eve span, 
Where was then the gentleman ? " 

Dangerous thoughts were fermenting everywhere. They 
existed in the minds of those who, about this same time, 
were exciting the riots of Kouen, Eeims, Chalons, Troyes and 
Paris and the insurrection of the White Caps in Flanders. 
Thus premonitory signs always herald great storms. The 
unthinking protests of the fourteenth century against 
mediaeval double feudalism, the secular and the religious, 
announced the deliberate revolt of Luther and Calvin in 
the sixteenth in the realm of faith, of Descartes in the 
seventeenth in philosophy, and of the whole world in the 
eighteenth in politics. 

Richard II (1380). — One year after the accession of 
Richard II, son of the Black Prince, 60,000 men marched 
to the gates of London, demanding the abolition of serfdom, 
the liberty to buy and sell in the markets and fairs and, 
what was more unreasonable, the reduction of rents to a 
uniform standard. They were put off with fair promises. 
After they had dispersed, 1500 of them were hanged and 
everything went on as before. 

The young king had three ambitious and greedy uncles. 



94 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1397-1422. 

They stirred up opposition to him. He rid himself of the 
most turbulent, the Duke of Gloucester, by assassination. 
Many nobles were slain or exiled, and England bowed her 
head in terror. Henry of Lancaster, a descendant of a third 
son of Edward III, and then in exile, organized a vast con- 
spiracy. Richard was deserted by all and deposed by Par- 
liament " for having violated the laws and privileges of the 
nation." So, thus early, England through her Parliament 
had already succeeded in forming a people and in resuming 
the ancient idea of national rights superior to dynastic 
rights. The next year Richard was assassinated in prison. 

Henry IV. Battle of Agincourt (1415). Treaty of Troyes 
(1420). — Henry IV devoted his reign of fourteen years to 
settling the crown securely in his house. On his death-bed 
he advised his son to recommence the war against France, 
so as to occupy the turbulent barons. In 1415 Henry V 
renewed at Agincourt the laurels of Crecy and Poitiers. 
This defeat, again due to the rashness of the nobility, over- 
turned the Armagnac government. The Burgundians re- 
entered Paris, which they again deluged with blood. After 
the English archers and men-at-arms had safely placed their 
booty on the other side of the Strait, they returned to the 
quarry, pillaging Normandy systematically and capturing 
its cities one after the other. In 1419 Rouen fell into their 
hands. The assassination of John the Fearless at the bridge 
of Montereau also served their interests. This murder, 
authorized by the dauphin, threw the new duke of Bur- 
gundy, Philip the Good, into the English party. Henry V, 
once master of Paris and of the person of Charles VI, caused 
himself by the treaty of Troyes to be acknowledged as heir 
to the king, the daughter of whom he married. This lady 
was to avenge France by transmitting to the son whom she 
bore to Henry V the imbecility of his French grandfather. 

Charles VII and Joan of Arc. — Henry and Charles both 
died in 1422. They were succeeded by two kings in France, 
the English infant Henry VI at Paris, and the Valois 
Charles VII south of the Loire. 

The little court of the latter, whom the English derisively 
called king of Bourges, cared only for pleasure and gayety. 
The constable of Richemont sought in vain to rouse the 
king from his unworthy occupations. Meanwhile petty de- 
feats chased his armies from Burgundy and Normandy. 
Bedford, the English regent, managed affairs skilfully and 



SECOND PERIOD OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 95 

in 1428 laid siege to Orleans the key of the south. The 
disgraceful battle of the Herrings completed the discourage- 
ment of the French party, and Charles VII was contem- 
plating retreat to the extreme south when Joan of Arc made 
her appearance. 

This peasant girl, born at Domremy on the frontier of 
Lorraine, presented herself at court, claiming that it was 
her mission to deliver Orleans and crown the king. Her 
virtues, her enthusiasm and her confidence inspired confi- 
dence. The most valiant captains threw themselves into 
Orleans, following in her train. Ten days later the English 
after several defeats evacuated their camp. Next she won 
the battle of Patay, where the English commander Talbot 
was captured, and conducted the king to Reims, where 
he was crowned. Believing her wonderful mission accom- 
plished, she wished to return home but was dissuaded. In 
May, 1430, while defending Compiegne, she fell into the 
hands of the Burgundians, who sold their prisoner to the 
English for 10,000 francs. Tried and condemned for witch- 
craft, she was burned alive at Rouen on May 30, 1431. 

Success and Reforms of Charles VII. — This crime marked 
the close of English good fortune. Affected by French 
reverses, the Duke of Burgundy remembered that he was a 
Frenchman and abandoned the English. His defection was 
profitable for himself, as he obtained several cities and coun- 
ties, as well as exemption from all homage. Thus he became 
king in fact in his fiefs. In the following year Paris opened 
her gates to Charles VII. Transformed by his many mis- 
fortunes and ably supported by the Chancellor Juvenal, the 
silversmith Jacques Coeur, the artilleryman Bureau, and 
the soldiers Dunois, Lahire and Xaintrailles, he triumphed 
everywhere. In 1444 the English, through the influence 
of the Cardinal of Winchester who headed the peace party, 
concluded a truce of two years with France, and sealed it 
by the marriage of Henry VI with Margaret of Anjou. At 
the same time Charles VII put down a rebellion of the 
nobles, who were alarmed at the progress of his authority, 
and had the Bastard of Bourbon tied up in a sack and 
thrown into the water. By the creation of a permanent 
army, he dealt a death-blow at feudal power. This army 
comprised fifteen companies of 100 lances each and of 
free archers. The States of Orleans suggested the idea 
and voted a perpetual tax of 10,200,000 francs for the pur- 



96 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1450-1453. 

pose. In consequence of this strictly national force, Charles 
was no longer dependent on the mercenaries and highway- 
men who devastated, rather than defended, France. 

Soon he found himself strong enough to finish with the 
English. By the battle of Formigny (1450) he drove 
them from Normandy, and by that of Castillon (1453) from 
Guyenne. They retained only Calais. So ended the Hun- 
dred Years' War, which had heaped so many calamities upon 
France. It had strengthened public liberty in England and 
enforced the dependence upon Parliament of victorious kings 
who needed money and men for their expeditions. While 
it continued, the two peoples advanced farther in the differ- 
ent paths which we have seen them enter. Amid the ruins 
of France royalty was finding absolute power. Despite 
their triumphs of Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt, the Eng- 
lish kings learned submission to Parliament and the law. 




Copy>i B lit. 1898. by T. Y. Crowell & Co 



Eog.nuoi „, Collon. Oilman Si Co.. N. V. 



a.d. 125O-1300.J SFAIN AND ITALY FROM 12&0-1463 97 



XVI 

SPAIN AND ITALY FROM 1250 TO 1453 

Intermission of the Spanish Crusade. Domestic Troubles. 

— The Moors were now crowded upon the Alpujarras as the 
Christians had formerly been upon the Pyrenees. Instead 
of continuing the struggle and driving them into the sea, the 
Spanish kings forgot the conflict which had made their fort- 
une, and yielded to the temptation of meddling in Euro- 
pean affairs. 

Navarre, which had been unable to increase its territory 
in the religious wars, looked northward toward France, and 
gave itself to the Capetians when its heiress married Philip 
the Fair. 

Alphonso X, king of Castile, wished to be emperor of 
Germany. While he wasted his money in this vain candi- 
dacy, the rival houses of Castro, Lara and Haro kept the 
kingdom in turmoil and even sought aid from the Moors. 
Threatened with insurrection, the king himself solicited the 
support of the African Merinides. The nation deposed 
him and put in his place his second son, Don Sancho, a 
brave soldier (1282). Nevertheless Alphonso X was sur- 
named the Wise. He knew astronomy, and published a 
code wherein he tried to introduce the right of representa- 
tion, prevalent in the feudal system, but not in Spain. 

Sancho availed himself of the ancient law and claimed 
the succession in preference to his nephews, sons of his 
deceased elder brother. Therefrom troubles ensued with 
the king of France, uncle of the dispossessed young princes. 
The stormy minorities of Ferdinand IV and Alphonso XI 
saw disorders again in Castile. The latter prince, however, 
rendered himself illustrious by the great victory of Rio 
Salado over the Merinide invasion and by the capture of 
Algiers. After him Pedro the Cruel and his brother, 
Henry II of Transtamara, disputed the throne. By the aid 
of Duguesclin Transtamara succeeded, after he had himself 
stabbed his brother in his tent. Henry III vainly tried to 



98 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1410. 

repress the Castilian nobility, who under John II and 
Henry IV tyrannized over the country and court. Royalty 
became independent only about the close of the fifteenth 
century under Isabella and Ferdinand the Catholic, as we 
shall see later on. 

While the energies of Castile were dissipated in civil 
dissensions, Aragon acquired Roussillon, Cerdagne and the 
lordship of Montpellier, and interfered in the affairs of the 
Albigenses. It also gained Sicily after the Sicilian Ves- 
pers, which it retained despite the stipulations of the treaty 
of Anagni, and added Sardinia to its dominions. In 1410 
the glorious house of Barcelona became extinct. Its various 
crowns passed to a prince of Castile, who left two sons : 
Alphonso V, who became king of the Two Sicilies through 
his adoption by Joanna of Naples ; and John II, who for a 
time united Navarre and Aragon by poisoning his son-in- 
law, Don Carlos of Viana. To Ferdinand, the successor of 
this monster, it was reserved to accomplish the unity and 
grandeur of Spain by his marriage with Isabella of Castile. 

The feudal system never was really established in Castile. 
Amid the risks of a desperate struggle against the Moors, 
the nobles and cities, fighting separately, acquired inde- 
pendence and fortified themselves in their castles or behind 
their walls. Many of these cities obtained fueros, or 
charters of liberty, and the king merely placed an officer or 
regidor in them for general supervision. But three distinct 
classes existed in Castile: the ricos hombres or great 
landed proprietors ; the caballeros or hidalgos, or petty 
nobles, exempt from imposts on condition of serving on 
horseback ; the pecheros or taxpayers who formed the 
burgher class. As every one had fought in the Holy War, 
there were no serfs as in feudal countries and the gulf be- 
tween the classes was less profound than elsewhere. Be- 
ginning with 1169 the deputies of the cities were admitted 
to the Cortes, the national parliament. 

Aragon had more of the feudal system, perhaps because 
of the former Carlovingian domination in the Marches of 
Barcelona. The ricos hombres received baronies, which 
they divided up and sub-enfeoffed. Next were the mes- 
naderos or lesser vassals, the infanzones or plain gentlemen, 
and the commoners. These four orders were represented 
in the Cortes. But Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia had 
their separate cortes. The royal authority was greatly 



A.D. 1385-1434.] SPAIN AND ITALY FROM 1250-1453 99 

hampered by the jurisdiction of the justiza or grand justi- 
ciary. 

Portugal at the extremity of Europe opened out new 
ways for herself. John I, head of the house of Avis 
which succeeded the extinct house of Burgundy, maintained 
the independence of Portugal against the pretensions of 
Castile by the victory of Aljubarotta (1385). He then 
turned the attention of his people toward Africa and in 
1415 conquered Ceuta. This expedition taught his youngest 
son, Henry, that Portugal, shut off from the land by Castile, 
had no future except toward the sea. He established him- 
self in the village of Sagres on Cape Vincent, summoned 
mariners and geographers, founded there a naval academy, 
and at last launched his navigators upon the ocean. In 
1417 they discovered Porto Santo, one of the Madeira Is- 
lands, where the prince planted vines from Cyprus and 
sugar-canes from Sicily. Pope Martin V granted him 
sovereignty over all the lands which should be discovered 
from the Canary Isles as far as the Indies, with plenary 
; indulgence for whoever should lose their lives in these 
v expeditions. Zeal redoubled. In 1434 Cape Bojador was 
; passed, then Cape Blanco and Cape Verde. The Azores 
were discovered. They were on the road to the Cape of 
Good Hope, which the Portuguese Vasco de Gama was to 
sail round half a century later. 

The Kingdom of Naples under Charles of Anjou (1265). — 
In the strife for universal dominion which the chiefs of 
Christendom, the Pope and the Emperor, had waged, Italy, 
the theatre and the victim of the struggle, could not attain 
independence. When the empire and the papacy declined, 
she seemed at last about to control her own destiny. Such 
however was not the case. Her old habits continued of 
intestine discords and of mixing strangers with her quarrels. 
She repeated the spectacle once presented by the turbulent 
cities of ancient Greece. She was covered with republics, 
waging incessant war with each other, and yet she shone 
with a vivid glow of civilization that was the first revival 
of letters and arts. 

The death of Frederick II (1250) marked the end of the 
German domination in Italy. But he left a son at Naples, 
Manfred, who, strong by his talents, his alliance with the 
podestats of Lombardy and the aid of the Saracens of 
Lucera at first braved the ill-will of the Pope. Alexander 



100 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1265-1310. 

IV had, it is true, been driven from Rorne by Brancaleone, 
who had restored momentarily the Soman republic. 

Urban IV, resolved to extirpate "the race of vipers," 
had recourse to foreign aid. He bestowed the crown of 
Naples upon Charles of Anjou, the brother of Saint Louis, 
on condition of his doing homage to the Holy See, paying 
an annual tribute of 8000 ounces of gold and ceding Bene- 
ventum. In addition to this Charles swore never to join 
to this kingdom the imperial crown, Lombardy or Tuscany 
(1265). The excommunicated Manfred was vanquished and 
slain, and the Pope's legate caused his body to be thrown 
into the Garigliano. Conradin, a grandson of Frederick 
II, came from Germany to claim his paternal inheritance. 
Beaten and captured at Tagliacozzo, he was beheaded by 
order of Charles of Anjou, together with his friend Fred- 
erick of Austria. With him the glorious house of Suabia 
became extinct. 

The conqueror strengthened his power in the kingdom of 
Naples by executions. Despite his promises he ruled over 
most of Italy under the various titles of imperial vicar, 
senator of Rome and pacificator. He dreamed of a fortune 
still more vast and meditated restoring for his own benefit 
the Latin empire of Constantinople, which had recently 
fallen. After being diverted for a time from this project by 
the Tunisian crusade (1270) and by the opposition of Greg- 
ory X and Nicholas III, he was at last about to put it into 
execution when the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers (1282) 
gave Sicily to Peter III, king of Aragon, one of the accom- 
plices in the great conspiracy of which the physician Pro- 
cida was the head. Then began the punishment of this 
ambitious and pitiless man. Admiral Roger de Loria 
burned his fleet. His son Charles the Lame was captured 
in another naval battle, and the king of France, his ally, 
was repulsed from Aragon. The treaty of 1288 secured 
Sicily to a son of the Aragonese. In 1310 Pope Clement 

V compensated the house of Anjou by placing one of its 
members upon the throne of Hungary. 

Italian Republics. Guelphs and Ghibellines. — During 
this conflict in the south the little states of the north, 
freed from both the German and the Sicilian domination, 
were engaged in continual revolutions. The government 
passed in Lombardy into tyrannies ; in Tuscany into democ- 
racies j in Venetia into aristocracies ; in Romagna into all 



A.D. 1297-1M8.] SPAIN AND ITALY FEOM 1250-1453 101 

these various systems. In 1297 Venice declared that only 
the noble families of councillors then in office were eligible 
for the Great Council. This measure was shortly afterward 
crowned by the completion of the Golden Book, or register 
of Venetian nobility, and the establishment of the Council 
of Ten. In 1282 Florence raised the Minor Arts, or infe- 
rior trades, almost to the level of the Major Arts by setting 
up an executive council composed of the chiefs of all the 
Arts. This was to the disadvantage of the nobles, who 
could be admitted to public employments only on renounc- 
ing their rank. A little later the population was divided 
into twenty companies, under a like number of gonfaloniers 
or standard-bearers commanded by one supreme gonfalonier. 
The majority of the Tuscan cities adopted this organization 
with little change. So, too, did Genoa. But this was not a 
source of harmony. Genoa, which disputed Pisa's rights 
to Corsica and Sardinia, destroyed the military force of the 
Pisans in the decisive battle of Melloria (1284). The un- 
happy defeated city was at once attacked by all Tuscany. 
It resisted for a while and intrusted all power to the too 
famous Ugolino. When he had perished together with his 
four children in the Hunger Tower, prostrate Pisa was able 
to exist only by renouncing every ambition. Florence then 
controlled all Tuscany, but she turned her arms against her 
own breast. Under the name of Ghibellines and Guelphs 
her factions carried on a relentless war. Dante the great 
Florentine poet, the father of the Italian language, in exile 
lamented these dissensions and sought everywhere for some 
power capable of restoring peace to Italy. He found it 
neither in the papacy, then captive at Avignon, nor in the 
emperor to whom Italy was simply a source of profit. 
Henry VII, Louis of Bavaria, John of Bohemia, extorted 
what they could from the unhappy land. 

The tribune Bienzi, filled with classic memories which 
were then reviving, tried to restore liberty to Borne (1347) 
and to render her the protectress of Italian independence. 
He set up a so-called Good State, but this merely ephemeral 
enthusiasm was powerless to overcome local passions, or the 
terror caused by the horrible black pest or the Plague of 
Florence which Boccaccio has described in his Decameron 
(1348). At the instigation of the papal legate he was 
massacred by that very populace of Borne by whom he had 
been so often applauded. 



102 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 137*-1453. 

Return of the Papacy to Rome (1378) . The Principalities. — 

The revolution of 1347 warned the papacy of the discontent 
caused by its absence. It finally returned to Koine in 1378. 
Stripped of the power and prestige which it had formerly 
possessed, it was incapable of giving rest to revolutionary 
Italy. In Florence there were constant troubles between 
the Major Arts or upper class, led by the Albizzi, and the 
Minor Arts, led by the Medici. Hostile to both were the 
ciompi or petty tradesmen. The latter put Michael Lendo, 
a wool-carder, at their head, who seized the power but was 
unable to retain it. The commercial rivals, Venice and 
Genoa, were waging against each other the so-called war 
of Chiozza, which Venice, at first besieged in her own lagoons, 
finally terminated by the destruction of the Genoese marine. 
She also subdued Padua and Vincenza, but did not ruin them 
as Florence had done to Pisa, destroying it from top to 
bottom. 

In Lombardy skilful leaders took advantage of civil dis- 
cords and converted the republics into principalities. Thus 
did Matteo Visconti at Milan, Cane della Scala at Verona 
and Castruccio Castracani at Lucca. In 1396 Gian Galeozzo 
Visconti bought from the Emperor Wenceslas the titles of 
duke of Milan and count of Pavia, with supreme authority 
over twenty-six Lombard cities. The condottieri, or merce- 
naries, another scourge of Italy, handed over everything to 
the first adventurer who was able to lead or pay them. A 
former peasant, Sforza Attendolo, became a mercenary, 
entered the service of Philip Marie Visconti, married his 
daughter and at his death seized the duchy of Milan (1450). 
Northern Italy was falling under the sword of a mercenary. 
Florence bowed her head beneath the yardstick of an opulent 
merchant, Cosmo de Medicis, who supplanted the Albizzi. 
With the support of that same Sforza, whose banker he was, 
he established in his city an analogous system, though less 
despotic and more brilliant than that of Milan. The cry 
for liberty which the Roman Porcaro lifted in the peninsula 
in 1453 found no echo. 

The Aragonese at Naples. — As far as the welfare of Italy 
was concerned, there was nothing to hope for from the Nea- 
politan kingdom, itself a prey to endless wars of pretenders. 
Against the guilty Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Urban VI 
summoned Charles of Durazzo, the son of the king of Hungary, 
and offered him the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Joanna 



A.D. 1381-1442.] SPAIN AND ITALY FROM 1250-1453 103 

recognized as her successor Duke Louis of the second house 
of Anjou. Charles, victorious in 1381, smothered Joanna 
under a mattress. For a time he exercised an important 
influence over Italy. But when he died in Hungary, the 
Kingdom of Naples relapsed into anarchy, fought over by 
the princes of Anjou, Hungary and Aragon. Alphonso V of 
Aragon, who was adopted by Joanna II, finally prevailed 
(1442). 

Brilliancy of Letters and Arts. — Despite her wretched 
political condition, Italy shone in her letters, arts, manu- 
factures and commerce. Her language, already formed at 
the court of Frederick II, became fixed under the pen of 
Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. She welcomed the Greek 
fugitives. Her learned men, Petrarch, Chrysoloras, Braccio- 
lini and Leonardo Bruni, gave the signal for the search after 
manuscripts and the revival of ancient letters. Nicholas V 
founded the Vatican library ; Cosmo de Medicis founded the 
Medicean library, and had Plato commentated by Marcilio 
Ficino. Venice had her church of Saint Mark (1071) ; Pisa 
her famous cathedral (1063), her Baptistery (1152), her lean- 
ing tower (1174), her gallery of the Campo Santo (1278) ; 
Florence, her churches of Santa Croce, of Santa Maria Del 
Fiore, and that wonderful cathedral of Brunelleschi, opposite 
which Michael Angelo wished to be buried. Cimabue, Giotto, 
and Masaccio were creating painting. 

At the end of the thirteenth century Venice had 35,000 
sailors and monopolized the commerce of Egypt, while 
Genoa controlled that of Asia Minor, the Dardanelles 
and the Black Sea. Milan was a great industrial city in 
the middle of a rich country. Florence manufactured 
80,000 pieces of cloth a year, and Verona one-fourth as 
many. Canals fertilized Lombardy. Banks put money 
in circulation. No other European state was so advanced 
in civilization, but no country was so divided. Conse- 
quently it possessed much wealth to excite the greed of 
foreigners, but not a citizen or a soldier to defend it. 



104 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1250-1278. 



XVII 

GERMANY. THE SCANDINAVIAN, SLAVIC AND TURKISH 

STATES 

(1250-1453) 

The Interregnum. The House of Hapsburg (1272). — In 
stead of employing its forces to organize Germany, the 
imperial authority had worn itself out in Italy. After the 
death of Frederick II, the former country endured twenty- 
three years of anarchy (1250-1273). This is called the 
Great Interregnum. The throne, disdained by the German 
princes and sought by such foreign or feeble competitors as 
William of Holland, Richard of Cornwall and AlphonsoXof 
Castile, was practically vacant. While the supreme author- 
ity was thus eclipsed, the kings of Denmark, Poland, and 
Hungary and the vassals of the kingdom of Burgundy, 
shook off the yoke of imperial suzerainty. The petty nobil- 
ity and the cities ceased payment of their dues. The lords 
built donjons which became lairs of bandits. To protect 
their possessions against violence, the lesser lords formed 
confederations and so did the cities. About the same time 
the Hanseatic League came into existence. This confedera- 
tion had Lubeck, Cologne, Brunswick and Dantzic as its 
headquarters, and its chief counting houses were London, 
Bruges, Berghen and Novgorod. In the country districts 
many serfs acquired liberty or sought an asylum in the 
suburbs of the cities. 

The great interregnum ceased with the election of Ru- 
dolph of Hapsburg, an impoverished lord who did not seem 
formidable to the electors (1273). Abandoning Italy 
which he called the lion's den, he centred his attention upon 
Germany. He defeated and slew on the Marchfeld (1278) 
Ottocar II, King of Bohemia, who refused him homage. 
He annulled many grants made by successors of Frederick 
II, forbade private wars, made the states of Franconia, 
Suabia, Bavaria and Alsace take an oath to keep the public 



a.d. 1308-1414.] GERMANY 105 

peace of the empire. He founded the power of his house 
by investing his sons, Albert and Rudolph, with the duchies 
of Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola. 

Switzerland (1315). — The Hapsburgs had lands in Swit- 
zerland, and their bailiffs were hard upon the mountaineers. 
In 1307 the cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden united 
to end this oppression. To this period attaches the heroic 
legend of William Tell. Albert was assassinated by his 
nephew at the passage of the Reuss when about to give 
the confederates battle. Leopold, Duke of Austria, lost the 
fight at Morgarten (1315), where the Swiss laid the founda- 
tions of their independence and of their military renown. 
The three original cantons were joined by Lucerne, Zurich, 
Glaris, Zug and Berne (1332-1353). The victories of Sein- 
pach (1386) and of Naefels (1388) consolidated Helvetian 
Jiberty. 

Powerlessness of the Emperors. — The German princes who 
now disposed of the crown desired to give it only to penni- 
less nobles, so that the emperor should not be able to call 
them to account. For this reason they elected Henry VII 
of Luxemburg (1308). Louis IV of Bavaria belonged to a 
stronger house but, excommunicated by Pope John XXII 
and threatened by the then all powerful king of France, 
he was on the point of resigning a title which brought him 
only annoyance. Then the princes, ashamed of the situa- 
tion forced upon the man of their choice, drew up the Prag- 
matic Sanction of Frankfort, which declared that the Pope 
had no rights whatever over the empire or over the em- 
peror. The reign of Charles IV (1346-1378) is remarkable 
only for the greed of that needy prince, who made money 
out of everything, " plucking and peddling out the imperial 
eagle like a huckster at a fair." Nevertheless Germany 
owes him the Golden Bull, which determined the imperial 
elective system. It named seven Electors, three of them 
ecclesiastics, the archbishops of Mayence, Cologne and 
Treves, and four laymen, the king of Bohemia, the Count 
Palatine, the Duke of Saxony and the Margrave of Branden- 
burg (1356). 

Wenceslas disgraced the imperial throne by ignoble vices, 
and was deposed in 1400. Under Sigismund the Council 
of Constance assembled and the Hussite War broke out. 
The council was convened in 1414 to reform the Church 
and to terminate the schism which had arisen from the 



106 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1414-1444. 

simultaneous election of two popes, one at Rome and the 
other at Avignon. \lt barely attained the second object 
and failed in the first. It sent to the stake John Huss, 
rector of the University of Prague. He had attacked the 
ecclesiastical hierarchy, auricular confession and the use of 
images in worship. His followers, called the Hussites, 
revolted under the leadership of a blind general, John 
Zisca. All Bohemia was aflame and for fifteen years peo- 
ple religiously cut one another's throats ! 

At the death of Sigismund (1438) the Hapsburgs again 
ascended the imperial throne, which they occupied until 
1806. Albert II died in 1439 while fighting the Ottoman 
Turks, and his posthumous son Ladislas inherited only 
Bohemia and Hungary. But Frederick, another Austrian 
prince of the Styrian branch, succeeded to the empire 
(1452). He was the last emperor who went to Rome for 
coronation. However the resonant title did not confer 
even the shadow of power. The head of the empire had 
as emperor neither revenues nor domains nor military 
forces nor judicial authority, except in rare cases. His 
right to veto the decisions of the Diet was generally a 
mockery. The Diet, divided into the three colleges of the 
electors, the princes and the cities, was the real govern- 
ment of Germany. Still it governed as little as possible, 
and did in reality govern very little the seven or eight hun- 
dred states of which the empire was composed. 

Hungary, then the bulwark of Europe against the Otto- 
man Turks, was attached to the German political system. 
Under the reign of Sigismund it had been united for a 
brief period to Austria, but became separated therefrom 
under Ladislaus, king of Poland, who was defeated and 
slain by the Ottomans at Varna (1444). John Hunyadi, 
voevode of Transylvania and regent of the kingdom, for 
a long time held the Mussulmans in check. 

Union of Calmar (1397). — Scandinavia comprised the 
three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. These 
countries, whence the pagan Northmen had set out, were 
converted in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Denmark 
was powerful under Canute the Great, who reigned also 
over England, and under the two brothers, Canute VI and 
Waldemar the Victorious (1182-1241) who conquered Hol- 
stein and Nordalbingia. Waldemar had large revenues, a 
fine navy and a numerous army. He published the Code 



A.D. 1254-1466.] GERMANY 107 

of Scania. Danish students went in quest of learning to 
the University of Paris. Later on Sweden in turn became 
powerful under the dynasty of the Folkungs, who founded 
Stockholm (1254). Norway suffered from long continued 
disturbances, due to the elective character of its monarchy 
which became hereditary only in 1263. 

In 1397 under Margaret the Great, daughter of the 
Danish Waldemar III, it was stipulated by the Union of 
Calmar that the three northern kingdoms should form a 
permanent union, each retaining its own legislation, consti- 
tution and senate. This union, the condition of their 
greatness and security, unhappily did not last. After the 
death of the " Semiramis of the North" (1412), it was 
weakened by the rebellion of Schleswig and Holstein and 
was broken in 1448 by Sweden, which then gave itself a 
king of its own. Denmark and Norway remained united. 

Power of Poland. — The Slavic states between the Bal- 
tic and the Black Sea furnish very little to history before 
the ninth century. The Poles on the banks of the Vistula 
and Oder had as their first duke Piast, the founder of a 
dynasty which reigned for a time under the suzerainty of 
the German empire. Boreslav I the Brave (922) declared 
himself independent and assumed the title of king. Boles- 
lav III the Victorious (1102-1138) subdued the Pomera- 
nians. But after him Silesia withdrew. The Knights of 
the Teutonic Order were called to succor Poland against 
the Borussi or Prussians, an idolatrous tribe which sacri- 
ficed human beings. They established a new state between 
the Vistula and the Niemen, which became a dangerous 
enemy. Poland was compelled to cede to it Pomerelia 
and Dantzic. She indemnified herself under Casimir the 
Great by the conquest of Red Russia, Volhynia and Podolia 
and extended her frontiers as far as the Dnieper (1333- 
1370). Yet under this sagacious prince the pacta conventa 
took its rise. This was a system of capitulations imposed 
by the nobility on new kings, and destined to become a 
source of that anarchy which finally delivered Poland to 
her enemies. The election to the throne of Jagellon, Grand 
Duke of Lithuania, in 1386, rendered Poland the dominant 
state of Eastern Europe. Erom the Knights of the Teutonic 
Order he seized many provinces, and by the Treaty of Thorn 
their dominions were reduced to eastern Prussia (1466). 
The Mongols in Russia. — Russia, which absorbed a 



108 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1223-1395. 

great part of Poland later on, had as yet done little. We 
have seen how the Northmen pirates led by Rurik entered 
the service of the powerful city of Novgorod, which they 
eventually occupied as masters (862). Gradually spreading 
out, they descended the Dnieper, to seek at Constantinople 
lucrative service or adventure. In the eleventh century 
the grand principality of Kief was already a respectable 
power. In the twelfth the supremacy passed to the grand 
principality of Vladimir. In the following century Russia 
was invaded by the Mongols of Genghis Khan, who in 1223 
fought a battle in which six Russian princes perished. 
Baty captured Moscow in 1237 and advanced as far as 
Novgorod. The grand principality of Kief ceased to 
exist; that of Vladimir paid tribute. Poland, Silesia, 
Moravia and Hungary were conquered or devastated. 
Even the Danube was crossed and for a time all Europe 
trembled. The Mongols halted at last before the mountains 
of Bohemia and Austria, but Russia remained under their 
yoke for two centuries. 

The Ottoman Turks at Constantinople (1453). — Toward 
the same period a less noisy but more tenacious invasion 
was taking place south of the Black Sea. Descending from 
the Altai or " Golden Mountains," the Turks had invaded 
India, Persia, Syria and Asia Minor. Othman, the chief of 
one of their smaller tribes, obtained possession of Brousa in 
1325, and his son Orkhan gained Nicomedia, Nicaea and Gal- 
lipoli on the European side of the Dardanelles. Mourad I, 
endowed the Ottomans with a terrible army by developing 
the corps of the janissaries. This soldiery was composed of 
captive Christian youth, who were reared in the Mussulman 
religion. Special tracts of land were assigned them. En- 
forced celibacy and life in common gave them some re- 
semblance to a military order. Before directly attacking 
Constantinople, the sultans outflanked it. Mourad I took 
Adrianople and attacked the valiant peoples of Bulgaria, 
Servia, Bosnia and Albania. Victor at Cossova, he fell by 
assassination on the field of battle (1389). His successor, 
Bayezid I, reaped the fruits of his victory. Macedonia and 
Bulgaria submitted and Wallachia acknowledged itself 
tributary. 

On the banks of the Danube Bayezid I encountered a Eu- 
ropean crusade, commanded by Sigismund. Many French 
knights, and among them John the Fearless, took part. 



A.D. 1396-1453.] GERMANY 109 

Those brilliant nobles ruined their cause by their obstinate 
rashness at the fatal battle of Nicopolis (1396). More effi- 
cacious aid reached the Greeks from an unexpected quarter. 
Tamerlane had restored the empire of Genghis Khan, and 
ruled from the Ganges to the Don. Assailing the growing 
Ottoman power, he overthrew and captured Bayezid I at the 
great battle of Angora (1402). The rapid disappearance 
of the Mongols enabled the Ottomans to recover. In 1422 
Mourad II laid siege to Constantinople but in vain. He 
failed also in Albania against Scanderbeg, but won the bat- 
tle of Varna, where Ladislaus, king of Poland and Hungary, 
was slain (1444). Fortunately the Hungarians and Hun- 
yadi, though sometimes defeated but always in arms, through 
their repeated efforts checked the conquerors. Moreover the 
Ottomans could not hurl their whole strength upon West- 
ern Europe so long as Constantinople resisted them. Mo- 
hammed II resolved to free himself from this determined 
enemy. He besieged the imperial city with an army of over 
200,000 men, an immense artillery and an enormous fleet. 
His ships he transported overland into the harbor across 
the isthmus which separates the Golden Horn from the Bos- 
phorus. The Emperor Constantine XIII maintained a he- 
roic though hopeless resistance for fifty-seven days. A 
final assault, on May 29, 1453, accomplished the fall of the 
Eastern heir of the Roman Empire. 



110 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES 



XVIII 

SUMMARY OP THE MIDDLE AGES 

If now we sum up this history, apparently so confused, 
we perceive that the ten centuries of the Middle Ages natu- 
rally divide into three sections. 

From the fifth to the tenth century the Roman Empire 
crumbles away. The two invasions from the north and the 
south are accomplished. The new German Empire which 
Charlemagne attempts to organize is dissolved. We behold 
everywhere the destruction of the past and the transition 
to a new social and intellectual condition. 

From the tenth to the fourteenth century feudalism has 
its rise. The crusades take place. The Pope and the Em- 
peror contend for the world. The burgher class is reconsti- 
tuted. This is the mediaeval period, simple in its general 
outlines, which reaches its fullest flowering in the time of 
Saint Louis of France, with customs, institutions, arts and 
even a literature peculiar to itself. 

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries this feudal so- 
ciety descends into an abyss of misery. The decay seems 
that of approaching death. But death is the condition of 
life. If the Middle Ages vanish, it is to make way for 
Modern Times. A little charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur 
will restore equality on the battlefield, a prophecy of ap- 
proaching social equality, either under royal omnipotence 
or under the protection of public liberties. Hence power 
changes its place. No longer the monopoly of the man of 
arms or of the noble, it passes first to the kings as later on 
it will pass to the people. Thought becomes secularized 
and quits the cloister. The genius of ancient civilization 
is about to spring forth. Already artists and writers are 
on the road of the Eenaissance, as the Portuguese are on 
that of the Cape of Good Hope. Audacious voices are 
heard arguing about obedience and even about faith. The 
Middle Ages have indeed come to an end since things are 
becoming new. 



SUMMARY OF THE MIDDLE AGES 111 

But did the Middle Ages wholly die ? They bequeathed 
to Modern Times virile maxims of public and individual 
rights, which then profited only the lords, but which now 
profit all. The Middle Ages developed chivalrous ideas, a 
sentiment of honor, a respect for woman, which still stamp 
with a peculiar seal those who preserve and practise them. 
Lastly, mediaeval architecture remains the most imposing ma- 
terial manifestation of the religious sentiment, an architect- 
ure we can only copy when we wish to erect the fittest 
houses of prayer. 



IE"DEX 



Abbassides, dynasty of the, 21. 

Abderrantnan I, 22. 

Abderrahman II, 22. 

Abderrahman III, 22, 6T. 

Abelard, 48, 72. 

Abou-Bekr, 19. 

^Egidius, 12. 

Aetius, 6, 11. 

Agincourt, battle of, 94. 

Agnes de Meranie, 78. 

Ai'znadin, battle of, 20. 

Alani, 4, 5. 

Alaric, 4, 5. 

Alaric II, 8, 13. 

Albert II of Germany, 106. 

Albert the Great of Germany, 73. 

Albigenses, 1, 66. 

Albizzi, 102. 

Alcantara, Order of, 69. 

Alcuin, 81. 

Alemanni, 2, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 33. 

Alexander III, Pope, 56. 

Alexander IV, Pope, 99, 100. 

Alexandria, 20. 

Alfred the Great, 39. 

Al-Hakam I, 22. 

Ali, 19, 20. 

Aljubarotta, battle of, 99. 

Al-Mamoun, 21. 

Almanzor, 21, 22, 23, 67. 

Almohades, 68, 69. 

Almoravides, 63. 

Alp Arslan, 59. 

Alphonso V of Aragon, 103. 

Alphonso X of Castile, 97, 104. 

Alphonso XI of Castile, 97. 

Alphonso V, king of the Two Sicilies, 98. 

Amalric, 8. 

Amrouk, 20. 

Andrew II of Hungary, 63. 

Angles, 2, 7, 8. 

Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, 8. 

Angora, battle of, 109. 

Anselm, Saint, 4S. 

Antioch, 60, 61, 62. 

Aquileia, destroyed by Attila, 6. 

Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 73. 

Aquitanians, 27. 

Arabs, 17-23. 68. 

Arbogast, 11. 

Arcadius, 4. 

Architecture, Byzantine, 49 ; mediaeval, 3! 

Aries, 8. 



Armagnacs, 92, 94. 

Arnaldo de Brescia, 55. 

Arnulf, 41, 51. 

Arteveld, Jacques van, 88. 

Arteveld, Philip van, 92. 

Arts, Major and Minor, 101, 102. 

Ascalon, battle of, 61. 

Assizes of Jerusalem, 61. 

Ataulf, 5. 

Athelstane, 39. 

Attendolo, Sforza, 102. 

Attila, 4, 6. 

Augsburg, battle of, 41. 

Augustine, Saint, 5. 

Ausculta Fili, 80. 

Austrasia, 14, 28. 

Avars, 29, 41. 

Averroes, 22, 23. 

Avicenna, 22. 

Avignon, Holy See at, 80. 

Avitus, 13. 

Bacon, Roger, 73. 

Bagdad, Caliphate of, 21. 

Baldwin I and II, kings of Jerusalem, 61. 

Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders, 60, 62. 

Baldwin of Bourg, 60. 

Baliol, John, 79, 87. 

Ball, John, 93. 

Bannockburn, battle of, 87. 

Barbarossa, 55, 62. 

Bastard of Bourbon, 95. 

Bavaria, 29. 

Bayezid I, 108. 

Beauvais, Vincent de, 73. 

Becket, Thomas a, 77, 84-85. 

Bedford, English regent, 94. 

Bedr, battle of, 18. 

Benedict XI, Pope, 80. 

Benedict, Saint, 25. 

Benefit of clergy, 84. 

Bernard, Saint, 61, 72. 

Bernard, Saisset, 80. 

Bernardo del Carpio, 74. 

Beziers, massacre at, 66. 

Bishop of Laon, 90. 

Black Prince, Edward the, 89, 91. 

Blanche of Castile, 78. 

Blois, Charles de, 89. 

Boccaccio, 101, 103. 

Boethius, 9. 

Bohemia, 106. 

Bohemond, 60. 



113 



114 



INDEX 



Bonaventura, Saint, 73. 

Boniface, Count, 5. 

Boniface II, Marquis of Montferrat, 62. 

Boniface VIII, Pope (Saint Boniface), 25, 

79. 
Boreslav I the Brave, King, 107. 
Boreslav III the Victorious, King, 57. 
Bourhon, Bastard, 95. 
Bouvines, battle of, 77. 
Bracciolini, 103. 
Brandenburg, margravate of, origin of 

Prussia, 41. 
Bretigny, treaty of, 90. 
Britain, 7, 8. 
Bruce, David, 89. 
Bruce, Robert, 87. 
Brunehaut, 14-15. 
Brunelleschi, 103. 
Buekholz, battle of, 28. 
Bureau, Jean, 95. 

Burgundians, 2, 7, 9 ; and Armagnacs, 92. 
Burgundy, 7, 36, 75. 

Caboche, 92. 

Cabochian Ordinance, 92. 

Calais, siege of, 89. 

Calatanazor, battle of, 67. 

Calatrava, Order of, 69. 

Calinar, Union of, 107. 

Calvin, 93. 

" Camp of Refuge," 82. 

Canossa, 54. 

Canterbury, Archbishop of, 48, 84. 

Canute the Great, 39, 106. 

Canute VI, 106. 

Capetians, 75-81. 

Captivity of Babylon, 80. 

Capucins, 65. 

Caribert, 14. 

Carloman, brother of Charlemagne, 28. 

Carloman, son of Charles Martel, 27. 

Carlovingians, the, 27-37. 

Carthage, 20. 

Casimir the Great, 107. 

Cassiodorus, 9. 

Castillon, battle of, 96. 

Castracani, Castruccio, 102. 

Chalons, battle of, 6, 12. 

Chansons de geste, 49. 

Chanson de Roland, 49. 

Charlemagne, 10, 27-32. 

Charles II the Bald, of France, 34-35. 

Charles III the Simple, 36. 

Charles IV the Fair, 81. 

Charles V the Wise (dauphin), 90; (king),91. 

Charles VI of France, 92. 

Charles VII of France, 94, 95. 

Charles the Fat, Emperor. 36, 51. 

Charles IV of Germany, 105. 

Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, S9, 91. 

Charles of Anjou, king of Naples, 100. 

Charles the Lame of Aragon, 100. 

Charles Martel, 20, 26. 

Chaucer, 74. 

Childebert, 14. 

Chilperic, 14. 

Chiozza, war of, 102. 

Chrysoloras, 103. 



Church, from its beginning to the Middle 
Ages, 24-26; and the Empire, 51-58; 
and Philip IV of France, 79-80. 

Cid Rodrigo de Rivar, 68, 74. 

Ciraabue, 103. 

Clement III, Pope, 54. 

Clement V, Pope, 80, 100. 

Clodimir, 14. 

Clodion, 11. 

Clotaire, 14-15. 

Clotaire II, 15. 

Clotilde, 12. 

Clovis, 4, 7, 12-13. 

Cocherel, battle of, 91. 

Code, Justinian, 10; of Scania, 106, 107; 
Theodosian, 9. 

Cffiur, Jacques, 95. 

Colonna, SO. 

Commons, 87. 

Concordat of Worms, 55. 

Condottieri, 102. 

Conquest of Constantinople, The, 73. 

Conrad I of Germany, 51. 

Conrad II, 52. 

Conrad III, 55, 61. 

Conradin, 100. 

Constance, treaty of, 56 ; Council of, 105. 

Constantine XIII, Emperor, 109. 

Constantinople. 9, 10, 20, 59, 63, 108. 

Constitution, English, 82-87. 

Constitutions of Clarendon, 84, 85. 

Cordeliers (religious order), 65. 

Cordova, Caliphate of, 21, 22, 67. 

Corte Nuova, battle of, 57. 

Cossova, battle of, 108. 

Council of Ten, 101. 

Courtray, battle of, 81. 

Crecy, battle of, S9. 

Crescentius, 52. 

Crusades, 59-70. 

Czechs. See Bohemia. 

Dagobert, 15. 

Dante, 74, 101, 103. 

Decameron, Boccaccio's, 101. 

Descartes, 93. 

Detmold, battle of, 29. 

Didier, king of the Lombards, 28. 

Digest of Justinian, 10. 

Dominicans, 65. 

Doomsday Book, 83. 

Dorji»um, battle of, 60. 

Duguesclin, 91, 97. 

Dunbar, battle of, 87. 

Dunois, Count of, 95. 

Duns Scotus, 73. 



East Anglia, 8. 
Ebroin, 16. 

Eccelino de Romana, 58. 
Edmund II Ironsides, 39. 
Edward the Confessor, 82. 
Edward I of England, 87. 
Edward II, 87. 
Edward III, 81, 88, 91. 
Edward the Black Prince. 

Prince. 
Egbert the Great, 39. 



See Black; 



INDEX 



115 



Eginhard, 31. 

Egypt, Louis IX in, 64 ; Napoleon in, 64. 

Ehresburg, battle of, 51. 

Eleanor of'Guyenne. 01, 84. 

Eleanor of Provence, 86. 

Empire, Charlemagne's, 29 ; of the Franks, 
24-32 ; German founded (8ST), 51. 

England, Northmen in, 39 ; invaded bv 
Normans, 82; 1066 to 1327, 83-87; in 
Hundred Years' War, 8S-96. See Britain. 

Ennodius, Bishop, 9. 

Esehenbach, Wolfram de, 73, 74. 

Essex, 8. 

Ethelred, 39. 

Euclid, 23. 

Eudes, son of Robert the Strong, 36. 

Evora, Order of, 69. 

Falkirk, battle of, 87. 

Fatimites, 19, 21. 

Ferdinand of Aragon, 98. 

Ferdinand IV of Castile, 97. 

Fiesole, battle of, 5. 

Flemings, insurrection of the, 80, 81. 

Florence, 101, 102, 103. 

Folkungs, dynasty of the, 107. 

Fontanet, battle of, 34. 

Formigny, battle of, 96. 

Foulques, 62. 

France, foundation of modern state of, 35 ; 
boundaries in 1100, 47 ; formation of 
kingdom of, 75-S1 ; in the Hundred 
Tears' War, S8-91, 93-96. 

Franciscan friars, 65. 

Franconian dynasty, 51-55. 

Franks, 2, 6, 7. 

Fredegonde, 14-15. 

Frederick I Barbarossa, Emperor, 55. 

Frederick II, Emperor, 57, 63, 99. 

Free companies, 91. 

Froissart, 73, 91. 

Genghis Khan, 108. 

Genoa, 101. 

Genseric, 4, 5, 6. 

Germany, in the fourth century, 2-3 ; con- 
quered by Charlemagne, 2:1-29 ; first de- 
marcation of modern nation of, 35 ; 
boundaries in ninth century, 47 ; old 
Empire of, founded, 51 ; and the Papacy, 
51-58 ; in the Crusades, 61-62 ; and house 
of Hapsburg, 104-105 ; dissolving of 
Empire, 105-106. 

Ghibellines, 56, 101. 

Giotto, 103. 

Godfrey of Bouillon, 60, 61. 

Godwin, Earl, 82. 

Golden Book, 101. 

Golden Bull, 105. 

Gon train, 14. 

Gothic architecture, 49. 

Goths, 2, 4. 

Gottschalk, 48. 

Great Britain, 47. 

Great Interregnum, 104. 

Great Ordinance of Reformation, 90. 

Gregory the Great, Pope, 25. 

Gregory III, Pope, 26. 



Gregory VII, Pope, 53-54. 
Gregory X, Pope, 100. 
Guelphs, 56, 58, 101. 
Guillaume de Lorris, 73. 
Guillaume de Sens, 74. 
Gundobad, 13. 

Hanseatic League, 72, 104. 

Hapsburg, house of, 104. 

Harold of England, 82. 

Haroun-al-Raschid, 21. 

Hastings, battle of, 82. 

Hegira, 18. 

Hengist, 8. 

Henry (Duke), Emperor, 51-52. 

Henry II, Emperor, 52. 

Henry V, Emperor, 76. 

Henry I of England, 83. 

Henry II of England (Henry Plantagenet), 

76, 84-85. 
Henry III of England, 78, 86. 
Henry IV of England, 94. 
Henry V of England, 94. 
Henry VI of England, 94. 
Henry I of France, 75. 
Henry the Fowler, 41. 
Henry the Lion, 56. 
Henry VII of Luxemburg, 105. 
Henry the Proud, 55. 
Henry de Transtamara, 91. 
Henry II of Transtamara, 97. 
Heptarchy, Saxon, 39. 
Heraclius, 18, 20. 
Heristal, Martin, 16. 
Heristal, Pepin, 16, 26. 
Hermann-Saul, 28. 
Hermanric, 5. 
Herrings, battle of the, 95. 
Heruli, 8, 9. 
Hescham I and II, 22. 
Hidalgos, 98. 

Hildebrand, the monk, 52-53. 
Hincmar, 48. 
Hippo, 5. 

Hohenstaufens, 55, 73. 
Honorius, 4. 
Horsa, 8. 
Hospitallers, 61. 
Hugh Capet, 36. 

Hugh the Great of Vermandois, 60. 
Hugues de Payen, 61. 
Hundred Years' War, 75, 81, 88-96. 
Hungary, 41, 106. 
Hunger Tower, 101. 
Huns. 3-4, 6. 
Hunyadi, John, 106, 109. 
Huss, John, 106. 
Hussite War, 105. 

Infanzones, 98. 

Ingeborg of Denmark, 78. 

Innocent II, Pope, 55. 

Innocent III, Pope, 56, 62, 68, 77, 78, 85. 

Innocent IV, Pope, 57, 63. 

Inquisition in France, 66. 

Institutes of Justinian, 10. 

Investitures, quarrel of, 54. 

Irminsul, 28. 



116 



INDEX 



Isaac Comnenus, 62. 

Isabella of Castile, 98. 
Italy, barbarians invade, 4-6. 8, 41 ; king- 
dom of, 47 ; republics in, 100-101. 
Iurique, battle of, 69. 

Jacquerie, 89, 90. 

Jacques Ceeur, 95. 

Jagellon, 107. 

Janissaries, 108. 

Jayme I the Conqueror, 69. 

Jerusalem, 60. 

Joan of Arc, 95. 

Joanna I, queen of Naples, 102. 

Joannes Scotus Erigena, 48. 

John the Fearless, 92, 94, 108. 

John the Good, 89, 90. 

John (Lackland) king of England, 77, 85- 

86. 
John II of Aragon, 98. 
John I of Portugal, 99. 
John XXII, Pope, 105. 
Joinville's Memoirs, 73. 
Jongleurs, 49. 
Judith, Empress, 33. 
Justinian, 10. 
Justinian II, 26. 
Jutes, 2, 7. 
Juvenal, Chancellor, 95. 

Kaaba, temple of the, 17. 

Khaireddin Barbarossa, 41. 

Kbaled, 20. 

Kierry-sur-Oise, edict of, 43. 

Kilidj Arslan, 60. 

King Arthur, 49. 

Knights of Christ, 66. 

Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, 64. 

Knights Templar, 61, 64, 80. 

Knights of the Teutonic Order, 65, 107. 

Koran, 18. 

Ladislaus, king of Poland, 106, 109. 

Lahire, 95. 

Lanfranc, 48, 74. 

Lara, the children of, 74. 

Las Navas de Tolosa, battle of, 69. 

Leger, Saint, bishop of Autun, 16. 

Legists, 55, 72, 

Legnano. battle of. 56. 

Lendo, Michael, 102. 

Leo the Iconoclast. 26. 

Leonardo Bruni, 108. 

Leopold, Duke of Austria, 62. 

Leudes, 3. 30. 

Lewes, battle of, 86, 

Library, French Royal, 91 ; Vatican, 103. 

Libuin, Saint, 2S. 

Lnegrians, 7. 

Lollard, 93. 

Lombard League, 56. 

Lombards, 2, 25, 26, 33. 

Lombardy, 1112, 103. 

Loria, Admiral Roger de, 100. 

Lothaire, son of the Debonair, 33-34. 

Lothaire II of Germany, 55. 

Lotharingia. 35. 

Louis the Child, 51. 



Louis the Debonair, 33-34. 

Louis the German, 35. 

Louis I the Pious, of France, 29, 83. 

Louis II the Stammerer, 35. 

Louis III, 36. 

Louis IV d'Outremer, 36. 

Louis VI the Fat, 76, 83. 

Louis VII, 61, 76, 84. 

Louis VIII, 78. 

Louis IX (Saint Louis), 63 -64, 78-79, 86. 

Louis X the Quarrelsome, 81. 

Louis XIV, 75. 

Louis IV of Bavaria, 101, 105. 

Luitprand, 26. 

Luther, 93. 

Macedonia, 4. 

Magna Charta, 85, 86, 87. 

Maitre Jean, 74. 

Major Arts, 101, 102. 

Malek Kamel, 63. 

Malek Shah, 59. 

Manfred, 99, 100. 

Marcel, :Etienne, 90. 

Marchfeld, the, 104. 

Marcilio Ficino, 103. 

Margaret of Anjou, 95. 

Margaret the Great of Denmark, 107. 

Martigues, Gerard de, 61. 

Martin of Troyes, 73. 

Martin V, Pope, 99. 

Masaccio, 103. 

Matilda, Countess, 54. 

Matilda, Empress, 83, 84. 

Mayence, Diet of, 56. 

Mayors of the palace, 15, 16. 

Mecca, 17, 19. 

Medici, the, 102. 

Medici, Cosmo de, 102. 

Medina, IS. 

Meistersingers, 74. 

Melloria, battle of, 57, 101. 

Mendicant friars, 65. 

Mercia, 8. 

Merinides, 97. 

Merovig, 12. 

Merovingians, 11-16. 

Merseburg, battle of, 41, 52. 

Mesnaderos, 98. 

Michael Angelo, 103. 

Middle Ages, 1-111. 

Milan, 47, 102, 103. 

Minnesingers, 74. 

Minor Arts, 101, 102. 

Missi dominici, 80. 

Moaviah, 20. 

Mohammed, 17-19. 

Mohammed II, 109. 

Molav, Jacques, 80. 

Mongols, 41, 107, 108. 

Monologium. the, 48. 

Mons-en-Puelle, battle of, 81. 

Montfort, Simon de, Earl of Leicester, 66, 

86. 
Moors, 2, 20 ; invade Spain, 68-69 ; power 

of, reduced, 97, 9S, 103. 
Morgarten, battle of, 105. 
Morocco founded, 68. 



INDEX 



117 



Mount Ohud, battle of, 18. 
Mourad I, Sultan, 109. 
Mourad II, Sultan, 109. 
Mythology, German, 3. 

Naefels, battle of, 105. 
Naples. 99-100. 
Navarre, 47, 79, 97, 98. 
Netherlands, 34, 71. 
Neii stria, 14, 36. 
Nevil Cross, battle of, 89. 
Nibelungenlied, 74. 
Nlcsea, besieged by Crusaders, 60. 
Nicholas n, Pope, 53. 
Nicholas III, Pope, 100. 
Nicholas V, Pope, 103. 
Nicopolis, battle of (1396), 109. 
Norgaret, Guillaume de, 80. 
Normandy, 47, 77, 78, 83-85. 
Normans, 82, S3, 84. 
Northmen, 2, 38, 40. 
Northumberland, 8. 
Norway, 39, 48, 106. 
Noureddin, 61. 
Novellm of Justinian, 10. 
Noyon, 47. 

Oath of Strasburg, 34. 

Odoacer, 6. 

Olaf, king of Norway, 39. 

Omar, 19. 

Ommiades, 20. 

Orkhan, 108. 

Orleans, besieged by Alaric, 6; by the Eng- 
lish, 95. 

Osnabriick, battle of, 29. 

Ostrogoths, 4, 8-9. 

Othman, successor of Mohammed, 19. 

Othman, a chief of the Ottoman Turks, 108. 

Otto of Brunswick, 56. 

Otto the Great, Emperor, 41, 52. 

Otto II, Emperor, 52. 

Otto III, Emperor, 52. 

Ottocar II, 104. 

Ottoman Empire, formation of, 109. 

Ottoman Turks, 41, 106 ; conquest of Con- 
stantinople bv, 108-109, 

Oxford, statutes of, 78, 86, 87. 

Pacta Conventa, 107. 

Paderborn, 28. 

Padua, 102. 

Pandects, 10. 

Papacy, 25-26 ; and German Empire, 52- 
58 ; "and the Crusades, 59, 62 ; and Philip 
IV of France, 79-80 ; at Avignon, SO. 
See Church. 

Paris, Council of, 15 ; University of, 72, 73. 

Parliament, British, 86. 

Patay, battle of, 95. 

Pavia, 47, 102. 

Pecheros, 98. 

Pedro the Cruel, 91, 97. 

Pelavo, 67. 

Pepin the Short, 27. 

Peter the Hermit, 59, 60. 

Peter III of Aragon, 100. 

Peter's Pence, 39, 82. 



Petrarch, 103. 

Pharamond, 11. 

Philip the Good of Burgundy, 94. 

Philip II Augustus, of France, 62, 77, 85. 

Philip III the Bold, of France, 79, 90. 

Philip IV the Fair, of France, 79, 88, 89. 

Philip V of France, 81. 

Philip of Suabia, 56. 

Piast, Duke, 107. 

Picts, 7. 

Pierre de Bonneuil, 74. 

Pierre de Castelnau, 66. 

Pierre de Fontaine, 45. 

Pierre des Vignes, 57. 

Pisa, 101, 103. 

Plague of Florence, 101. 

Plasian, Guillaume de, 80. 

Poitiers, battle of, 89. 

Poland, 47, 48 ; dominant power of eastern 

Europe, 107. 
Porcaro, Stephen, 102. 
Portugal, 99. 
Pragmatic Sanction, 105. 
Probus, 11. 
Procida, 100. 
Provencal language, 49. 
Prussia, 41, 65. 
Pulcheria, 9. 

Quadi, the, 2. 

Eadagaisus, 4. 

Ramazan, fast of, 19. 

Raoul, Duke of Burgundy, 36. 

Raymond, Count of Toulouse, 60. 

Rechiarius, 7. 

Rechila, 7. 

Recollects, the, 65. 

Remi, Saint, 12. 

Republics, Italian city-, 100-101. 

Richard of Cornwall, Emperor, 86, 104. 

Richard Coeur de Lion, 62, S5. 

Richard II of England, 93. 

Ricos hombres, 98. 

Rienzi, 101. 

Ring, the camp of the Avars, 29. 

Rio Salado, battle of, 97. 

Robert, Duke of France, 36. 

Robert, Duke of Normandy, 60. 

Robert the Strong, 35. 

Robert Wace, 49. 

Roche Derien, battle of, 89. 

Roger II of Sicily, 56. 

Rollo, 36. 

Roman de Brut, 49. 

Romance of the Rose, 73. 

Rome, Alaric captures, 5-6 ; the Church in, 

24-26, 102 ; and Rienzi, 101. 
Rome, Bishop of. See Papacy. 
Roncalia, Diet of, 55. 
Roncesvaux, 29. 
Roosebec, battle of, 92. 
Round Table, 49. 
Royale, 52. 
Royalty, Frankish, 11 ; Merovingian, 12-16 ; 

Carlovingian, 26-37 ; Capetian, 251-257 ; 

Norman, in England, 258-259 ; progress 

of Spanish, 97-99. 



118 



INDEX 



Rudolph of Hapsburg, 104. 
Rurik, 40, 108. 

Kussia, foundation of state of, 40 ; Mon- 
gols in, 107, 108. 

Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, treaty of, 36. 
Saint James of Castile, Order of, 69. 
Saint Jean d'Acre, besieged by Crusaders, 

62. 
Saint Louis. See Louis IX of France. 
Saintes, battle of, S6. 
Saladin, 62. 
Saladin's tithe, 62. 
Salic Law, 81. 
Satnarcand, 22, 23. 
Sancho of Castile, Don, 97. 
Sancho III, king of Navarre, 68. 
Saracens, 27, 40-11. 
Saxons, 2, 6, 7-8, 26, 27, 28, 29. 
Saxony, 51. 
Scala, Cane della, 102. 
Scandinavia, 106, 107. 
Scania, Code of, 106, 107. 
Scotland, 47, 79. 
Scots, 7. 

Scourge of God. See Attila. 
" Semiramis of the North," 107. 
Sempach, battle of, 105. 
Serfs, 45. 
Sergius, Pope, 26. 
Shiites, the, 20. 
Sicilian Vespers, massacre of the, 79, 9S, 

100. 
Sigebert, 14. 

Sigismund, Emperor, 105. 
Simancas, battle of, 67. 
Slavs, 2, 29, 41, 107, 108. 
Sluggard Kings, 16. 
Sluice, battle of the, 88. 
Soissons, Council of, 78. 
Spain, extent in ninth century, 47 ; 1250 to 

1453, 97-99. 
Speculum 3/ajus, 73. 
States General', 80, 89, 90. 
Stephen II, Pope, 27. 
Stephen of Blois, 60, 84. 
Stilicho, 4. 

Stockholm founded, 107. 
Suabia, house of, established in southern 

Italy, 56 ; extinction of, 100. 
Suevi, the, 2, 5, 7, 9. 
Swmma Theologies, 73. 
Sunnites, 20. 
Sussex, 8. 
Sweden, 48, 106. 
Swein, 39. 
Switzerland, 105. 
Syagrius, 6, 12. 
Sylvester II, Pope, 48. 
Symrnachus, 9. 

Tagliacozzo, battle of, 100. 

Taillebourg, battle of, 86. 

Talbot, Lord, 95. 

Tamerlane, 109. 

Tarik, 20. 

Tartars 6 

Templar, knights, 61, 64, 80. 



Tenchebray, battle of, 83. 

Testry, battle of, 16. 

Teutonic Order, 65. 

Theodoric, S-9, 13. 

Theodosian Code, 9. 

Theodosius II, 9. 

Theophania, Princess, 52. 

Thierry, king of Austria, 14. 

Thorn, treaty of, 107. 

Thuringia, 47. 

Togrul Beg, 21. 

Tours, battle of, 20, 26. 

Tribur, Diet of (SS7), 36, (1076) 54. 

Troubadours, 49. 

Trouveres, 49. 

Troyes, treaty of, 94. 

Truce of God, 44. 

Tunis, 64. 

Tuscany, 47, 100. j 

Two Sicilies, 57, 98. 

Tyre, 61. 

TIgolino, 101. 

Unam sanctum, papal bull, 80. 

Union of Calmar, 107. 

University of Paris, 72, 73. 

Unterwalden, 105. 

Urban II, Pope, 59. 

Urban IV, Pope, 100. 

Urban V, Pope, 93. 

Urban VI, Pope, 102. 

Uri, 105. 

Valentinian II, 11, 

Valois dynasty, 81. 

Vandals, 2, 5, 9, 10. 

Varna, battle of, 106, 109. 

Vasco de Gama, 99. 

Vatican library, 103. 

Venedi, 15. 

Venice, 47, 64, 101, 102, 103. 

Verdun, treaty of, 84. 

Vermandois, Lord of, 90. 

Vezelay, assembly of, 61. 

Vikings, 38. 

Villehardouin, Geoffrey de, 62, 73. 

Villeins, 45. 

Vincent de Beauvais, 73. 

Vincenza, 102. 

Visconti, the, 102. 

Visconti, Gian Galeozzo, 102. 

Visconti, Matteo, 102. 

Visconti, Philip Marie, 102. 

Visigoths, 4, 6, 20, 25. 

Volkshein, battle of, 54. 

Waldemar the Victorious, 106. 

Wallace, William, 79, 87. 

Wallia, 5. 

Walloon language, 49. 

Walter the Penniless, 60. 

War of the Nations, 18, 

Welfs, 55. 

Welsh, 7. 

Wenceslas, Emperor, 102, 104. 

Wessex, 8. 

White Caps, insurrection of the, 93 

Wicliffe, John, 93. 



BD-181 



INDEX 



119 



William the Conqueror, 82, 83. 

William II Eufus, 83. 

William Tell, 105. 

Winchester, Cardinal of, 95. 

Witikind, 28. 

Wittenagemot, 39. 

Worms, Synod of, 54 ; Concordat of, 55. 

Xaintrailles, 95. 
Xeres, battle of, 20, 67. 



Termouk, battle of the, 20. 
Tezdegerd, 20. 

Zacharias, Pope, 27. 
Zalaca, battle of, 68. 
Zeno, 8, 9. 
Zisca, John, 106. 
Zug, 105. 







































































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